Discussing Quotes
More Discussing Quotes
Much later, when I was discussing cosmological problems with Einstein, he remarked that the introduction of the cosmological term was the biggest blunder he ever made in his life.
george gamow— George Gamow, in his autobiography My World Line: An Informal Autobiography (1970), p. 44. Here the "cosmological term" refers to the cosmological constant in the equations of general relativity, whose value Einstein initially picked to ensure that his model of the universe would neither expand nor contract; if he hadn't done this he might have theoretically predicted the universal expansion that was first observed by Edwin Hubble.
It seems to me that we must make a distinction between what is "objective" and what is "measurable" in discussing the question of physical reality, according to quantum mechanics. The state-vector of a system is, indeed, not measurable , in the sense that one cannot ascertain, by experiments performed on the system, precisely (up to proportionality) what the state is; but the state-vector does seem to be (again up to proportionality) a completely objective property of the system, being completely characterized by the results it must give to experiments that one might perform.
roger penrose— Ch. 6, Quantum Magic and Quantum Mastery, p. 269
In discussing the unlimited grace of the Ganga, Eck cites a common Indian saying that “no child is too dirty to be embraced by its mother”. Indeed mother Ganga embraces everyone and everything that is put into her (or that she enters).
Ronald barrett— Aghor Medicine: Pollution, Death, and Healing in Northern India (3 February 2008, p. 48)
One can scarcely imagine a speaker at a meeting of a county medical society discussing the possible elimination of some disease by public health measures, and then qualifying his observations by the statement that many practitioners make a living out of treating the disease in question; and that unless the physicians are vigilant to prevent the adoption of such measures, this source of business will be taken from them.Yet speakers at barassociationmeetings arefrequently heard tomake similar observations about the effect of proposed reforms.
— 1938 'A New Society and an Old Calling,' in the Cornell Law Quarterly.
We become obsessed with 'truth' when discussing statements, just as we become obsessed with 'freedom' when discussing conduct...Like freedom, truth is a bare minimum or an illusory ideal.
j. l. austin— p. 130 (Philosophical Papers, (1979))
We never thought, sitting in my office on those afternoons, discussing Voltaire and Ingersoll, that we would ever be brought to this, did we? You, the atheist whom the mere sight of a church spire on the sky could enrage; and I who have never been able to divorce myself from reason enough even to accept your pleasant and labor-saving theory of nihilism.
william faulkner— The Judge to Mothershed, a suicide.
I curse in everyday life, but usually when I stub my toe. The topics I'm discussing, it's not necessary to curse. I found [cursing] is a sign that a joke is not finished or well-written.
jim gaffigan— Michael McIntyre (February 9, 2007) "He's bringing home the bacon, from clubs to Super Bowl ads", The Plain Dealer, p. 30.
Nobody went to see Tideland! I was hoping people would get angry about it but those that saw it didn't want to talk about it. This is the world we're living in, people don't want to discuss things that are actually worth discussing.
terry gilliam— IMDB profile
When we talk mathematics, we may be discussing a secondary language built on the primary language of the nervous system.
john von neumann— As quoted in John Von Neumann, 1903-1957' (1958) by John C. Oxtoby and B. J. Pettis, p. 128
Bosh. I find a rival — but no, I won't flatter myself that Tecumseh Fox would consider himself a rival of Dol Bonner — I find an eminent detective in your apartment, and that alone is enough, without adding that he is concealed in your bedroom while I am discussing my business with you...
rex stout— Dol Bonner, to her employee Amy Duncan, chapter 2
While discussing the merits of djbdns over BIND (2004):Niek: "Bind people don't ack djb points and vice versa."Paul Vixie: "i don't ack djb's existence, not merely his 'points.'"
paul vixie— Source: NANOG mailing list
The man writes with such genuine passion for the books he's discussing. With so many critics you feel they're writing so people will say they're good critics.
william empson— W. H. Auden, recorded in Alan Ansen (ed. Nicholas Jenkins) The Table Talk of W. H. Auden (London: Faber, 1991) p. 44.
Sexual harassment legislation feels unfair to men because if they sued over an ethnic joke, or over a woman discussing pornography or asking them out, they’d be laughed out of the company.
warren farrell— p. 289. (Part III: Government as substitute husband)
It would be a mistake to believe that one could come to any substantive understanding of politics by discussing abstractly the good, the right, the true, or the rational in complete abstraction from the way in which these items figure in the motivationally active parts of the human psyche, and particularly in abstraction from the way in which they impinge, even if indirectly, on human action.
raymond geuss— p. 28 (Philosophy and Real Politics (2008))
Let us endeavour for a moment to disconnect our thinking selves from the mask of humanity; let us imagine ourselves scientific Saturnians , if you will, fairly acquainted with such animals as now inhabit the Earth, and employed in discussing the relations they bear to a new and singular 'erect and featherless biped,' which some enterprising traveller, overcoming the difficulties of space and gravitation, has brought from that distant planet for our inspection, well preserved, may be, in a cask of rum.
thomas henry huxley— Ch.2, p.85
Whenever I teach my semiconductor device physics course, one of the central messages I try to get across early is the importance of energy band diagrams. I often put this in the form of "Kroemer's Lemma of Proven Igorance": If, in discussing a semiconductor problem, you cannot draw an Energy Band Diagram, this shows that you don't know what you are talking about, with the corollary If you can draw one, but don't, then your audience won't know what you are talking about.
herbert kroemer— in his Nobel Lecture, Quasi-Electric Fields and Band Offsets: Teaching Electrons New Tricks, 8 December 2000, at Aula Magna, Stockholm University.
The strange and wonderful Book of Job treats of the same subject as we are discussing; its contents are a fiction, conceived for the purpose of explaining the different opinions which people hold on Divine Providence. ...This fiction, however, is in so far different from other fictions that it includes profound ideas and great mysteries, removes great doubts, and reveals the most important truths. I will discuss it as fully as possible; and I will also tell you the words of our Sages that suggested to me the explanation of this great poem.
maimonides— Ch.22 (Part III)
I finished by saying that it struck me that all the ethical systems I was discussing were after the fact. That is, that people act as they are disposed to, but they like to feel afterwards that they were right and so they invent systems that approve of their dispositions.
alexei panshin— Chapter 12 (p. 166)
Then Lady Chiltern argued the matter on views directly opposite to those which she had put forward when discussing the matter with her husband.
Anthony Trollope— Ch. 29 (Phineas Redux (1874))
We spent a lot of time discussing cosmology first. I think that was your father’s unique way of evaluating people. You can tell a lot about a person, he once said, by the way they look at the stars.
robert charles wilson— Chapter 19 (p. 235)
If the Upanishads are the textbooks of philosophical principles discussing man, world and God, the Geeta is a handbook of instructions as to how every human being can come to live the subtle philosophical principles of Vedanta in the actual work-a-day world.
— Chinmayananda Saraswati (Swami Chinmayananda), "The Holy Geeta", Central Chinmaya Mission Trust, 1996, Chapter: General Introduction to The Bhagawad Geeta
One could wish no easier death than that of Socrates, calmly discussing philosophy with his friends; one could fear nothing worse than that of Jesus, dying in torment, among the insults, the mockery, the curses of the whole nation. In the midst of these terrible sufferings, Jesus prays for his cruel murderers. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a philosopher, the life and death of Christ are those of a God.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile: Or, On Education (1762), Book IV [[7]]
I think the question is not about "communists" and "individualists", but rather about anarchists and non-anarchists. And we, or at least many of us, were quite wrong in discussing a certain kind of alleged "anarchist individualism" as if it really was one of the various tendencies of anarchism, instead of fighting it as one of the many disguises of authoritarianism.
— Errico Malatesta, in "Note to the article "Individualism and Anarchism" by Adams" in Pensiero e Volontà No. 15 (1 August 1924)
discussing a problem with yourself is almost never a good way to secure a divergent viewpoint.
jim butcher— Narration, Chapter 21
He [Turgot] now, in 1749, at the age of twenty two, wrote... a letter which has been an object of wonder among political thinkers ever since. Its subject was paper money. discussing the ideas of John Law, and especially the essay of Terrasson which had supported them, he dissected them mercilessly, but in a way useful not only in those times but in these.
turgot, anne robert jacques, baron de laune— White, ibid., Seven Great Statesmen...
Criticism should be done by critics, and a critic should have some training and some love of the medium he is discussing. But these days, gossip-columnist training seems to be enough qualification. I suppose an ability to stand on your feet through interminable cocktail parties and swig interminable gins in between devouring masses of fried prawns may just possibly help you to understand and appreciate what a director is getting at, but for the life of me I can't see how.
Peter Sellers— Statement (September 1961), as quoted in Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers (1999) by Ed Sikov, p. 168
