Its (literature) influence can be more inspiring than being in the presence of a great man because it calls upon us to articulate our ideas and it beckons us to draw analogies. And so what literature offers is more than just something to rely on: it takes us by the hand and bolsters us up; …
Category Archives: Quotes
United States 250 – July 4th ‘For the Nation’
For the Nation Twelve score and ten years ago,the British settlers of this abundant landtook matters into their own handsand demanded that King George leave them beand set them free. From the Massachusetts Bay to Georgia’s red clay,from Philadelphia’s philosophersto Virginia’s founding elites,cries of freedom were everywherelike a relentless drumbeat. Common sense and self-evident truthswere …
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Copernicus’ Dedicatory Letter to Pope Paul III
I began myself to consider the movement of the earth. It seemed an absurd notion. Yet I knew that my predecessor had been granted the liberty to imagine all sorts of fictive circles to save the celestial phenomena. I therefore thought that I would be similarly granted the right to experiment, to try out whether, …
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Excerpts from Magnifica Humanitas of Pope Leo XIVON – Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence
There are many sources in the field of ethics in engineering and of artificial intelligence. Recently, in the press it was noted, that the Vatican and Pope Leo the Fourteenth wrote on artificial intelligence. The article is on much more than AI, and the best material is outside this subject. It is noteworthy that the …
Notes from Essays in Idleness by Kenko
I have only copied particular parts…
Kenkō on Modest Living
It is an excellent thing to live modestly, shun luxury and wealth and not lust after fame and fortune. Rare has been the wise man who was rich. In China once there was a man by the name of Xu You, who owned nothing and even drank directly from his cupped hands. Seeing this, someone …
Our Nation – Lincoln
Whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some transatlantic giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia could not, by force, take a drink from the Ohio river, or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. …
Leaves
In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the …
Education, Frederick Douglass
To deny education to any people is one of the greatest crimes against human nature. It is to deny them the means of freedom and the rightful pursuit of happiness, and to defeat the very end of their being. Frederick Douglass
Maxwell
No I don’t. I stand on the shoulders of Maxwell. Einstein when he was told he stood on Newton’s shoulders.