That man is a creature who needs order yet yearns for change is the creative contradiction at the heart of the laws which structur...e his conformity and define his deviancy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To suppose that "I know" is a descriptive phrase, is only one example of the descriptive fallacy, so common in philosophy. Even if... some language is now purely descriptive, language was not in origin so, and much of it is still not so. utterance of obvious ritual phrases, in the appropriate circumstances, is not describing the action we are doing, but doing it ("I do"): in other cases it functions, like tone and expression, or again like punctuation and mood, as an intimation that we are employing language in a special way ("I warn," "I ask," "I define"). Such phrases cannot, strictly, be lies, though they can "imply" lies, as "I promise" implies that I fully intend, which may be true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I can't quite define my aversion to asking questions of strangers. From snatches of family battles which I have heard drifting up ...from railway stations and street corners, I gather that there are a great many men who share my dislike for it, as well as an equal number of women who ... believe it to be the solution to most of this world's problems.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Have you never been moved by poor men's fidelity, the image of you they form in their simple minds? Why should you always talk of ...their envy, without understanding that what they ask of you is not so much your worldly goods, as something very hard to define, which they themselves can put no name to; yet at times it consoles their loneliness; a dream of splendor, of magnificence, a tawdry dream, a poor man's dream--and yet God blesses it!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of s...imple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish-...-to deny him, or define him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As I define it, rock & roll is dead. The attitude isn't dead, but the music is no longer vital. It doesn't have the same meaning. ...The attitude, though, is still very much alive--and it still informs other kinds of music.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most of the brain consists of "wires"; a single unit may have thousands of connections with other units and with itself. That is n...ot the case in a standard computer, where a chip usually has less than six connections. Moreover, neurons are much, much slower than the switching elements of the computer. It seems likely that the brain can accomplish its complex feats of perception and thought by means of millions of connections acting in parallel. The connections as a whole define the information content of the system. In this way a vast amount of knowledge can be brought to bear on a decision all at once. The brain seems to be able to perform as many as two hundred trillion operations in a second; not serially, but simultaneously.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »