By the worldly standards of public life, all scholars in their work are of course oddly virtuous. They do not make wild claims, th...ey do not cheat, they do not try to persuade at any cost, they appeal neither to prejudice nor to authority, they are often frank about their ignorance, their disputes are fairly decorous, they do not confuse what is being argued with race, politics, sex or age, they listen patiently to the young and to the old who both know everything. These are the general virtues of scholarship, and they are peculiarly the virtues of science.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Postmodernism entices us with the siren call of liberation and creativity, but it may be an invitation to intellectual and moral s...uicide.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Enthusiasm produces the most cruel disorders in human society; but its fury is like that of thunder and tempest, which exhaust the...mselves in a little time, and leave the air more calm and serene than before.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
That the corruption of the best things produces the worst, is grown into a maxim, and is commonly proved, among other instances, b...y the pernicious effects of superstition and enthusiasm, the corruptions of true religion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Enthusiasm, being the infirmity of bold and ambitious tempers, is naturally accompanied with a spirit of liberty; as superstition,... on the contrary, renders men tame and abject, and fits them for slavery.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Woman was originally the inventor, the manufacturer, the provider. She has allowed one office after another gradually to slip from... her hand, until she retains, with loose grasp, only the so-called housekeeping.... Having thus given up one by one the occupations which required knowledge of materials and processes, and skill in using them ... she rightly feels that what's left is mere deadening drudgery.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Terrified of being alone, yet afraid of intimacy, we experience widespread feelings of emptiness, of disconnection, of the unreali...ty of self. And here the computer, a companion without emotional demands, offers a compromise. You can be a loner, but never alone. You can interact, but need never feel vulnerable to another person.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ours has been called a culture of narcissism. The label is apt but can be misleading. It reads colloquially as selfishness and sel...f-absorption. But these images do not capture the anxiety behind our search for mirrors. We are insecure in our understanding of ourselves, and this insecurity breeds a new preoccupation with the question of who we are. We search for ways to see ourselves. The computer is a new mirror, the first psychological machine. Beyond its nature as an analytical engine lies its second nature as an evocative object.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When in the enfranchisement of the black men [women] saw another ignorant class of voters placed about their heads, and beheld the... danger of a distinctively "male" government, forever involving the nations of the earth in war and violence; and demanded for the protection of themselves and children, that woman's voice should be heard and her opinions in public affairs be expressed by the ballot, they were coolly told that the black man had earned the right to vote, that he had fought and bled and died for his country. It was not because the three-penny tax on tea was so exorbitant that our Revolutionary fathers fought and died, but to establish the principle that such taxation was unjust. It is the same with this woman's revolution; though every law were as just to woman as to man, the principle that one class may usurp the power to legislate for another is unjust, and all who are now in the struggle from love of principle would still work on until the establishment of the grand and immutable truth, "All governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »