Victor Tan

“But the day I finally realized I did not need to control Imaging, that, indeed, I ought not control her, that, in fact, I could not control her, and that if I could I would destroy the marriage, was the day our marriage began. If one can control the Other, one maintains a relationship only with one's self, a sort of masturbatory state that takes the place of the marriage. The Other becomes one's puppet, and puppeteers maintain relationships with only themselves. What a strange dynamic! When one is in control of the marriage, alas, there is no marriage.”
― Gerry Spence, How to Argue and Win Every Time

“It is clear that we require power. But the power we need is our own. The power exhibited in the winning argument may not be overtly powerful at all, for power may be experienced as gentleness, as compassion, as love, as humility, as sensitivity. We have come to understand that even sounds we thought powerful—the harsh voice of authority, the demanding dictates of the bully—are not sounds of power but the wretched noise of the insecure. We have come to understand that the application of excessive power often conceals cowardice or grave personality defects, that power is often useless to achieve what we want—to gain love or respect or success. And we have learned that power is deceptive, that at times there is no one more powerful than the powerless. So it has been throughout history. The Rockys have always been more powerful than the Apollo Creeds. The meek, unsullied by power, shall indeed inherit the earth.”
― Gerry Spence, How to Argue and Win Every Time

“Parents must rear their children toward that one day when the child begins to seek his or her freedom, when the insect, whether an ugly moth or a beautiful butterfly, seeks to abandon the cocoon. During the years between infancy and adolescence, the winning argument will have already been made. The winning argument will have been love; the losing argument, discipline. The winning argument will have been respect; the losing argument, manipulation. The winning argument will have been honesty; the losing argument, hypocrisy. The winning argument will have been freedom; the losing argument, control. If the child has been afforded winning arguments during the child's lifetime, there is little against which the adolescent can revolt. The child will spring forth into the world with joy, not hate; with respect and love, not fury and violence. To give to the world a child who is capable of joyously blooming is the gift of the successful parent.”
― Gerry Spence, How to Argue and Win Every Time

“The study of algebra in its own right, as a symbolic system apart from its applications, began to flourish in Renaissance Europe. It reached its pinnacle in the 1500s, when it started to look like what we know today, with letters used to represent numbers. In France in 1591, François Viète designated unknown quantities with vowels, like A and E, and used consonants, like B and G, for constants. (Today’s use of x, y, z for unknowns and a, b, c for constants came from the work of René Descartes about fifty years later.) Replacing words with letters and symbols made it much easier to manipulate equations and find solutions.”
― Steven H. Strogatz, Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe