The path of the norm is the path of least resistance; it is the route we take when we're on auto-pilot and don't even realize we're following a course of action that we haven't consciously chosen. Most people who eat meat have no idea that they're be...
I was too much taken up with another interest to care; I felt beneath my feet the threshold of the strange door, in my life, which had suddenly been thrown open and out of which came an air of a keenness I had never breathed and of a taste stronger t...
[the Mercury Seven walk through the space center after the response to Yuri Gagarin's space shot] John Glenn: I'm tired of being forthright, gracious and magnanimous. Gordon Cooper: Yeah. John Glenn: I'm tired of these stupid questions from the press...
MacReady: [talking into tape recorder] I'm gonna hide this tape when I'm finished. If none of us make it, at least there'll be some kind of record. The storm's been hitting us hard now for 48 hours. We still have nothing to go on. [MacReady briefly t...
I was missing lectures leading up to an essay test, so I went downstairs & got my textbook & pretended to study, with Animal Planet playing in the background. Everyone we learned about was either white or some sort of predecessor of the white, Christ...
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire p...
..."science" as defined in our culture has a philosophical bias that needs to be exposed. On the one hand, science is empirical. This means that scientists rely on experiments, observations and calculations to develop theories and test them. On the o...
We came around the corner and stood in the doorway of what looked like a paint-testing ground. This was where we proved once and for all that we were good loving parents. We decided to let him live. "What is painting doing in my best Tupperware bowl?...
The case for the humanities is not hard to make, though it can be difficult--to such an extent have we been marginalized, so long have we acceded to that marginalization--not to sound either defensive or naive. The humanities, done right, are the cru...
The question is not, Does or doesn't public schooling create a public? The question is, What kind of public does it create? A conglomerate of self-indulgent consumers? Angry, soulless, directionless masses? Indifferent, confused citizens? Or a public...
Odd: I wish I could believe in reincarnation. Chief Porter: Not me. Once down the track is enough of a test. Pass me or fail me, Dear Lord, but don't make me go through high school again. Odd: If there's something we want so bad in this life but we c...
A brick could be attached to a parachute and tossed out of an airplane, to test if it opens up properly. Well, the good news is the parachute worked as planned, but the bad news is the only other parachute on board is strapped to my back, and I’m a...
Has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced ...
Since September, I sat one seat behind Anna in algebra. Passed papers to her every day. Studied for tons of tests together. Though it often seemed impossible, Eventually, We always found the unknown for X. But not this time. This equation Bounces aga...
The strength of the Christian system — the acid test of it — is that everything fits under the apex of the existent, infinite-personal God, and it is the only system in the world where this is true. No other system has an apex under which everyth...
How do I know you're not crazy?" she asks. "How do I know you're not the craziest dude I've ever met?" "You'll have to test me out." "You have my info," she says. "I'll think about it." "Rain," I say. "That's not your real name." "Does it matter?" "W...
I’m reminded of Orville Tethington, inventor of the world’s first steam-powered fog machine. He’s also the guy who, after the Germans invented the flame thrower in WWI, decided to counteract it with his own creation, the candle thrower. The can...
It had belonged to that idea of the exasperated consciousness of his victim to become a real test for him; since he had quite put it to himself from the first that, oh distinctly! he could "cultivate" his whole perception. He had felt it as above all...
Why had no one told me that my body would become a battlefield, a sacrifice, a test? Why did I not know that birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers? But of course there is no way to tell this or to hear it. Until you...
Confession: I don't want everybody to be beautiful, not in that unlined, creaseless, symmetrical way. Android beauty, like it comes out of a test tube. Beauty without blemish or mark. Not only do I not identify with such people, I don't believe in th...
So how does one go about proving something like this? It's not like being a lawyer, where the goal is to persuade other people; nor is it like a scientist testing a theory. This is a unique art form within the world of rational science. We are trying...
