Great Throughts Treasury

"The world is one's oyster." - English Proverbs

"It can be creative, but in a more abstract way. Writing code can be kind of creativity you know, in terms of solving problems. My photographs are a lot like that, except they’re creating visual problems by solving them, as it were." - Erik Johannson

"When you expect something, it is on the way. When you believe something, it is on the way. When you fear something, it is on the way. Your attitude or mood is always pointing toward what is coming, but you are never stuck with your current point of attraction. " - Ester and Jerry Hicks

"From our position of being reasonably well off and comfortable, [perhaps] university professors, we tend to be patronizing about the poor in a very specific sense, which is that we tend to think, ‘Why don’t they take more responsibility for their lives?’ And what we are forgetting is that the richer you are the less responsibility you need to take for your own life because everything is taken care for you. And the poorer you are the more you have to be responsible for everything about your life… My lesson is to stop berating people for not being responsible and start to think of ways instead of providing the poor with the luxury that we all have, which is that a lot of decisions are taken for us. If we do nothing, we are on the right track. For most of the poor, if they do nothing, they are on the wrong track." - Esther Duflo

"Let us... quietly accept our times, with the firm conviction that just as much good can be done today as at any time in the past, provided only that we have the will and the way to do it." - Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

"The Chinese government keeps installing video cameras in its most troubling cities. Not only do such cameras remind passersby about the panopticon they inhabit, they also supply the secret police with useful clues[...]. Such revolution in video surveillance did not happen without some involvement from Western partners. Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles, funded in part by the Chinese government, have managed to build surveillance software that can automatically annotate and comment on what it sees, generating text files that can later be searched by humans, obviating the need to watch hours of video footage in search of one particular frame. (To make that possible, the researchers had to recruit twenty graduates of local art colleges in China to annotate and classify a library of more than two million images.) Such automation systems help surveillance to achieve the much needed scale, for as long as the content produced by surveillance cameras can be indexed and searched, one can continue installing new surveillance cameras. [...] The face-recognition industry is so lucrative that even giants like Google can’t resist getting into the game, feeling the growing pressure from saller players like Face.com, a popular tool that allows users to find and automatically annotate unique faces that apepar throughout their photo collections. In 2009 Face.com launched a Facebook application that first asks users to identify a Facebook friend of theirs ina photo and then proceeds to search the social networking site for other pictures in which that friend appears. By early 2010, the company boasted of scanning 9 billion pictures and identifying 52 million individuals. This is the kind of productivity that would make the KGB envious." - Evgeny Morozov

"We hackers are a playful bunch; we'll hack anything, including language, if it looks like fun (thus our tropism for puns). Deep down, we like confusing people who are stuffier and less mentally agile than we are, especially when they're bosses. There's a little bit of the mad scientist in all hackers, ready to discombobulate the world and flip authority the finger — especially if we can do it with snazzy special effects." - Eric S. Raymond

"A child develops individuality long before he develops taste. I have seen my kid straggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits that need only one accessory -- an empty bottle of gin." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

"But some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It's hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint - like a heartbeat. And pure love why, some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

"After all, Kierkegaard was hardly a disinterested scientist. He gave his psychological description because he had a glimpse of freedom for man. He was a theorist of the open personality, of human possibility. In this pursuit, present-day psychiatry lags far behind him. Kierkegaard had no easy idea of what "health" is. But he knew what it was not: it was not normal adjustment—anything but that, as he has taken such excruciating analytical pains to show us. To be a "normal cultural man" is, for Kierkegaard, to be sick—whether one knows it or not: "there is such a thing as fictitious health."38 Nietzsche later put the same thought: "Are there perhaps —a question for psychiatrists—neuroses of health?" But Kierkegaard not only posed the question, he also answered it. If health is not "cultural normality," then it must refer to something else, must point beyond man's usual situation, his habitual ideas. Mental health, in a word, is not typical, but ideal-typical. It is something far beyond man, something to be achieved, striven for, something that leads man beyond himself. The "healthy" person, the true individual, the self-realized soul, the "real" man, is the one who has transcended himself." - Ernest Becker

"New minicities, like the sleepy village of Alviso: Around the factory, where we would have a huge parking lot, Alviso has a cluttered collection of buildings, with trees everywhere. There are restaurants, a library, bakeries, a ‘core store’ selling groceries and clothes, small shops, even factories and workshops – all jumbled amid apartment buildings. These are generally of three or four stories, arranged around a central courtyard … They are built almost entirely of wood, which has become the predominant building material in Ecotopia, due to the reforestation program. … The apartments themselves are very large by our standards – with 10 or 15 rooms, to accommodate their communal living groups." - Ernest Callenbach

"A book, like a landscape, is a state of consciousness varying with readers." - Ernest Dimnet

"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?" - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"Enjoying living was learning to get your money's worth and knowing when you had it." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"I know now that there is no one thing that is true - it is all true." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"I thought I had already paid for everything. Not like women who always pay and pay and pay. There is no principle of reward and punishment. Simple exchange of values. You give something and get something in return. Or do you work for something. Either way, you pay for everything that is worth something. I was redeemed your life a lot of things that I liked, and that's why I felt the joy of life. Things that give you joy of preparing, may be paid in several ways - knowledge, experience, exposure or money. To enjoy life, in order to learn about your money and get something nutritious to enjoy it consciously. Generally, it is possible. The world is a good store." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"I thought I paid for everything. Not like women, pay and pay and pay. There is not a reward or punishment. Just exchange of values. Something comparable to, and in return you get something else. Or work for the sake of something. Anyway after all, at least partially good pay. Much of what I was paying, like me, and I had a good time. You pay either the knowledge or experience, or risk, or money. Enjoy life is nothing like the ability to get something equivalent expended money and realize it. And to get the full price for your money you can. Our world - a solid company. Excellent as a theory. In five years, I thought, it seems to me the same stupid, like all my other superior theory." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be" - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"I write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"It was strange how easy being tired enough made it." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"LetÂ’s not talk about how I am. ItÂ’s a subject I know too much about to want to think about anymore." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"Scott took literature so solemnly. He never understood that it was just writing as well as you can and finishing what you start." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"Then he began to pity the great fish that he had hooked. He is wonderful and strange and who knows how old he is, he thought. Never have I had such a strong fish nor one who acted so strangely. Perhaps he is too wise to jump. He could ruin me by jumping or by a wild rush. But perhaps he has been hooked many times before and he knows that this is how he should make his fight. He cannot know it is only one man against him, nor that it is an old man. But what a great fish he is and what will he bring in the market if the flesh is good. He took the bait like a male and he pulls like a male and his fight has no panic in it. I wonder if he has plans or if he is just as desperate as I am?" - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"This book is fiction, but there is always a chance that such a work of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"This is a good place, he said. There's a lot of liquor, I agreed." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"When I had finished the book I knew that no matter what Scott did, nor how he behaved, I must know it was like a sickness and be of any help I could to him and try to be a good friend. He had many good, good friends, more than anyone I knew. But I enlisted as one more, whether I could be of any use to him or not. If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure that he could write an even better one. I did not know Zelda yet, and so I did not know the terrible odds that were against him. But we were to find them out soon enough." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"When we came back to Paris it was clear and cold and lovely. The city had accommodated itself to winter, there was good wood for sale at the wood and coal place across our street, and there were braziers outside of many of the good cafes so that you could keep warm on the terraces. Our own apartment was warm and cheerful. We burned boulets which were molded, egg-shaped lumps of coal dust, on the wood fire, and on the streets the winter light was beautiful. Now you were accustomed to see the bare trees against the sky and you walked on the fresh- washed gravel paths through the Luxembourg Gardens in the clear sharp wind. The trees were sculpture without their leaves when you were reconciled to them, and the winter winds blew across the surfaces of the ponds and the fountains blew in the bright light. All the distances were short now since we had been in the mountains. Because of the change in altitude I did not notice the grade of the hills except with pleasure, and the climb up to the top floor of the hotel where I worked, in a room that looked across all the roofs and the chimneys of the high hill of the quarter, was a pleasure. The fireplace drew well in the room and it was warm and pleasant to work. I brought mandarins and roasted chestnuts to the room in paper packets and peeled and ate the small tangerine-like oranges and threw their skins and spat their seeds in the fire when I ate them and the roasted chestnuts when I was hungry. I was always hungry with the walking and the cold and the working. Up in the room I had a bottle of kirsch that we had brought back from the mountains and I took a drink of kirsch when I would get towards the end of a story or towards the end of the day's work. When I was through working for the day I put away the notebook, or the paper, in the drawer of the table and put any mandarines that were left in my pocket. They would freeze if they were left in the room at night. It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I 'd had good luck working. I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"When you have a child, the world has a hostage." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"You never kill anyone you want to kill in a war, he said to himself." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"A society for investigating nature and ascertaining truth cannot celebrate its commemoration day more fittingly than by a discussion of its highest general problems." - Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

"In many of these languages there are numerals only for one, two, and three: no Australian language counts beyond four. Very many wild tribes can count no further than ten or twenty, whereas some very clever dogs have been made to count up to forty and even beyond sixty." - Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

"Excellent! This is real life, full of antinomies and bigger than logic. Without order, planning, predictability, central control, accountancy, instructions to the underlings, obedience, discipline—without these, nothing fruitful can happen, because everything disintegrates. And yet—without the magnanimity of disorder, the happy abandon, the entrepreneurship venturing into the unknown and incalculable, without the risk and the gamble, the creative imagination rushing in where bureaucratic angels fear to tread—without this, life is a mockery and a disgrace." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"How can we disarm greed and envy? Perhaps by being much less greedy and envious ourselves; perhaps by resisting the temptation of letting our luxuries become needs; and perhaps by even scrutinizing our needs to see if they cannot be simplified and reduced." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"If technology is felt to be becoming more and more inhuman, we might do well to consider whether it is possible to have something better - a technology with a human face." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"Is it not evident that our current methods of production are already eating into the very substance of industrial man?" - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"It takes a good deal of courage to say "no" to the fashions and fascinations of the age and to question the presuppositions of a civilization which appears destined to conquer the whole world; the requisite strength can be derived only from deep convictions. If it were derived from nothing more than fear of the future, it would be likely to disappear at the decisive moment." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"Since there is now increasing evidence of environmental deterioration, particularly in living nature, the entire outlook and methodology of economics is being called into question. The study of economics is too narrow and too fragmentary to lead to valid insights, unless complemented and completed by a study of meta-economics." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"Social cohesion, cooperation, mutual respect, and above all, self-respect, courage in the face of adversity, and the ability to bear hardship—all this and much else disintegrates and disappears when these "psychological structures" are gravely damaged. A man is destroyed by the inner conviction of uselessness. No amount of economic growth can compensate for such losses—though this may be an idle reflection, since economic growth is normally inhibited by them." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"The common criterion of success, namely the growth of GNP, is utterly misleading and, in fact, must of necessity lead to phenomena which can only be described as neo-colonialism." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"To press non-economic values into the framework of the economic calculus, economists use the method of cost/benefit analysis. This is generally thought to be an enlightened and progressive development, as it is at least an attempt to take account of costs and benefits which might otherwise be disregarded altogether. In fact, however, it is a procedure by which the higher is reduced to the level of the lower and the priceless is given a price. It can therefore never serve to clarify the situation and lead to an enlightened decision. All it can do is lead to self-deception or the deception of others; all one has to do to obtain the desired results is to impute suitable values to the immeasurable costs and benefits. The logical absurdity, however, is not the greatest fault of the undertaking: with is worse, and destructive of civilization, is the pretense that everything has a price or, in other words, that money is the highest of all values." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"We should be searching for policies to reconstruct rural culture, to open the land for the gainful occupation to larger numbers of people, whether it be on a full-time or a part-time bases, and to orientate all our actions on the land towards the threefold ideal of health, beauty and permanence." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"Yet is seems, large-scale organization is here to stay. Therefore it is all the more necessary to think about it and to theorize about it. The stronger the current, the greater the need for skillful navigation." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"Multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind." - Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger