WSDrennan > WSDrennan's Quotes

“It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“If a man never contradicts himself, the reason must be that he virtually never says anything at all.”
― Erwin Schrödinger, What Is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches

“You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.”
― Marvin Minsky

“A radically unconventional future cannot be accommodated within the framework of plans made for a different world.”
― K. Eric Drexler, Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization

“Notice that the story [of technical progress accelerating indefinitely] is not testable; we just have to wait around and see. If the predicted year of true AI's coming is false, too, another one can be forecast, a few decades into the future. AI in this sense is unfalsifiable and thus--according to the accepted rules of the scientific method--unscientific.”
― Erik J. Larson, The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do

“The main character of any living system is openness.”
― Ilya Prigogine

“Entropy is the price of structure.”
― Ilya Prigogine, Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature

“Science seeks to understand complex processes by reducing them to their essential actions and studying the interplay of those actions--and this reductionist approach extends to art as well. Indeed, my focus on one school of art, consisting of only three major representatives, is an example of this. Some people are concerned that a reductionist analysis will diminish our fascination with art, that it will trivialize art and deprive it of its special force, thereby reducing the beholder's share to an ordinary brain function. I argue to the contrary, that be encouraging a focus on one mental process at a time, reductionism can expand our vision and give us new insights into the nature and creation of art. These new insights will enable us to perceive unexpected aspects of art that derive from the relationships between the biological and psychological phenomena.”
― Eric Kandel

“Indeed, the underlying precept of the new science of mind is that all mental processes are biological—they all depend on organic molecules and cellular processes that occur literally “in our heads.” Therefore, any disorder or alteration of those processes must also have a biological basis.”
― Eric Kandel, In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind

“We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would have not written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.”
― Woody Allen, The Illustrated Woody Allen Reader

“As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.”
― Albert Einstein

“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one - million - year - old light. A vast pattern - of which I am a part... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?”
― Richard Feynman

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Only sick music makes money today.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I am too inquisitive, too skeptical, too arrogant, to let myself be satisfied with an obvious and crass solution of things. God is such an obvious and crass solution; a solution which is a sheer indelicacy to us thinkers - at bottom He is really nothing but a coarse commandment against us: ye shall not think! ”
― Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm

“Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune