A computer does not think, it feels nothing, and what it is said to "know"--bits of information all cast in the digital mode--has ...no fringe. Nor has it a memory, only storage room. On any point called for, the answer is all or none. Vagueness, intelligent confusion, original punning on words or ideas never occur, the internal hookups being unchangeable; they were determined once for all by the true minds that made the machine and program. When plugged in, the least elaborate computer can be relied on to work to the fullest extent of its capacity; the greatest mind cannot be relied on for the simplest thing; its variability is its superiority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. If a man habituated to a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which he s...eldom travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief a space, his departure from the monotonous scene on which he has been an actor of importance would seem to be the signal for instant confusion.... The mine which Time has slowly dug beneath familiar objects is sprung in an instant; and what was rock before, becomes but sand and dust.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The kinship between the Prometheus myth and the Book of Job is obvious enough. Both heroes, blameless and upright, suffer at the h...and, or at least by the leave, of the Supreme Deity. But the Book of Job ends in the utter confusion of man's intelligence. "There have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not ... Wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." The stricken Titan, on the contrary, in the closing words of Aeschylus's tragedy, still protests against his "wrongs." We feel that the Greeks could not have stopped at that point; their spirit was not one of Shelleyan defiance or Byronic despair.... Higher than the caprices and pride of Zeus, higher also than the desperate endeavor of Prometheus, stands intelligent law.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Life baffles and seems almost to mock. It refuses long to remain consistently one thing or another and it seldom puts us into one ...mood without violating it soon after. But Art, seeming to have for human dignity a respect which Life consistently lacks, grants us at least our right to sorrow fully and freely when sorrow is called for or to laugh our laugh out when laughter is appropriate. The artist selects and classifies what nature mingles in a hideous confusion and in doing so he is, in one of his many ways, adapting the universe to our minds by presenting it in an order which our emotions can follow.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mac: We've gone to a heap of trouble not to have at least one hanging. Abraham Lincoln: Sure you have, Mac. And if these boys... had more than one life, I'd say go ahead. Maybe a little hangin' mightn't do 'em any harm. But the sort of hangin' you boys'd give 'em 'd be so, so permanent. Trouble is when men start takin' the law into their own hands they're just as apt in all the confusion and fun to start hangin' somebody who's not a murderer as somebody who is. And the next thing you know, they're hangin' one another just for fun, 'til it gets to a place a man can't pass a tree or look at a rope without feeling uneasy. We seem to lose our heads in times like this. We do things together that we'd be mighty ashamed to do by ourselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The confusion of emotions with behavior causes no end of unnecessary trouble to both adults and children. Behavior can be commande...d; emotions can't. An adult can put controls on a child's behavior--at least part of the time--but how do you put controls on what a child feels? An adult can impose controls on his own behavior--if he's grown up--but how does he order what he feels?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The LORD will afflict you with madness, blindness, and confusion of mind; you shall grope about at noon as blind people grope in d...arkness, but you shall be unable to find your way; and you shall be continually abused and robbed, without anyone to help.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the sc...riptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »