See, being a person is kind of random and arbitrary business. You may have noticed that. And you need to believe in something to keep it from being too random and arbitrary to handle. Some people take religion, or success, or patriotism, or family, b...
The traditional boundaries between various fields of science are rapidly disappearing and what is more important science does not know any national borders. The scientists of the world are forming an invisible network with a very free flow of scienti...
The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expense of it," [John] Adams wrote. "There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable ...
I don't want to write a mass before being in a state to do it well, that is a Christian. I have therefore taken a singular course to reconcile my ideas with the exigencies of Academy rules. They ask me for something religious: very well, I shall do s...
the bombers of Manhattan represent fascism with an Islamic face. . . . What they abominate about ‘the West,’ to put it in a phrase, is not what Western liberals don’t like and can’t defend about their own system, but what they do like about i...
One of the most striking results of modern investigation has been the way in which several different and quite independent lines of evidence indicate that a very great event occurred about two thousand million years ago. The radio-active evidence for...
Agrarians are committed to preserving both communities and the material means of life, to cultivating practices that ensure that the essential means of life suffice for all members of the present generation and are not diminished for those who come a...
The great majority of us are required to live a constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected by it if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what bring brings yo...
Among the things most characteristic of organisms--most distinctive of living as opposed to inorganic systems--is a sort of directedness. Their structures and activities have an adaptedness, an evident and vital usefulness to the organism. Darwin's a...
But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns....
For those scientists who take it seriously, Darwinian evolution has functioned more as a philosophical belief system than as a testable scientific hypothesis. This quasi-religious function of the theory is, I think, what lies behind many of the extre...
The whole message of the Course is: do not wait. In other words, salvation is offered to you this instant; be vigilant! Watch your mind. Be as attentive as you can this very instant. And the Course does not give specifics, like if this arises, do tha...
Now, as it happens, theology is actually a pitilessly demanding discipline concerning an immense, profoundly sophisticated legacy of hermeneutics, dialectics, and logic; it deals in minute detail with a vast variety of concrete historical data; over ...
Each time we check a Twitter feed or Facebook update, we encounter something novel and feel more connected socially (in a kind of weird impersonal cyber way) and get another dollop of reward hormones. But remember, it is the dumb, novelty-seeking por...
Ray Arnold: [trying to bring the system back on-line] Access main program. Access main security. Access main program grid. [the computer denies him finally saying, "You didn't say the magic word!"] Dennis Nedry: [on computer] Uh uh uh! You didn't say...
Sonmi-451: That ship... that ship must be destroyed. Hae-Joo Chang: Yes. Sonmi-451: The systems that built them must be turned down. Hae-Joo Chang: Yes. Sonmi-451: No matter if we're born in a tank or a womb, we are all Pureblood. Hae-Joo Chang: Yes....
Flanagan: Fucking black people, huh? Graham: What did you just say? Flanagan: I mean, I know all the sociological reasons why, per capita eight times more black men are incarcerated than white men... Schools are a disgrace, lack of opportunity, bias ...
Ron Woodroof: I still got HIV? Dr. Vass: You will always test positive for HIV. And now you've got AIDS for all the toxic shit you've put in your body. You've shut your immune system and now you've got chronic leumonia, among other things. It could c...
Joyce Cooper: Fascist! Nicholas Angel: I beg your pardon? Joyce Cooper: [doing a crossword puzzle] System of government categorized by extreme dictatorship. Seven across. Nicholas Angel: Actually that's fascism. Joyce Cooper: Fascism! Wonderful. Nich...
Elastigirl: This is the right hangar, but I don't see any jets. Mr. Incredible: A jet's not fast enough. Elastigirl: What's faster than a jet? Dash: Hey, how about a rocket? Elastigirl: Great. I can't fly a rocket. Violet: You don't have to. Use the ...
Reg: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? Attendee: Brought peace? Reg: Oh, peace - shut up! Reg: There ...
