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 »
Look carefully through all the claims pressing upon you in your complicated life, and decide once and for all what it is that is t...he one really important and overmastering duty in it, and should be the one dominating aim. Then remember that if you succeed in that, the others, so multifarious, are really no more than the fringe of the garment, and that you need not spend so much anxiety over them, provided that the one most important is faithfully attended to.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And, indeed, is there not something holy about a great kitchen?... The scoured gleam of row upon row of metal vessels dangling fro...m hooks or reposing on their shelves till needed with the air of so many chalices waiting for the celebration of the sacrament of food. And the range like an altar, yes, before which my mother bowed in perpetual homage, a fringe of sweat upon her upper lip and the fire glowing in her cheeks.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constant...inople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It has to be acknowledged that in capitalist society, with its herds of hippies, originality has become a sort of fringe benefit, ...a mere convention, accepted obsolescence, the Beatnik model being turned in for the Hippie model, as though strangely obedient to capitalist laws of marketing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... most reform movements in our country have been cursed by a lunatic fringe and have mingled sound ideas for social progress wit...h utopian nonsense.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The City of New York is like an enormous citadel, a modern Carcassonne. Walking between the magnificent skyscrapers one feels the ...presence on the fringe of a howling, raging mob, a mob with empty bellies, a mob unshaven and in rags.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »