One way of emphasizing the singularity of the recent past is [..] to observe that the total number of humans ever to have lived is estimated at around (a bit less than) 100 billion. One of Walt Whitman's poems has a memorable image—thinking of all ...
In his temptation of Jesus, Satan quoted Scripture, and he didn't remember, misquote anything. God wants his children to eat bread, not to starve before stones. God will protect his anointed one with the angels of heaven. God will give his Messiah al...
The fact that Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment, is nowhere better illustrated than in the two fields for slight contributions to which you have done me the great honour of awarding the the Prize in Physics for the year ...
At first sight nothing seems more obvious than that everything has a beginning and an end, and that everything can be subdivided into smaller parts. Nevertheless, for entirely speculative reasons the philosophers of Antiquity, especially the Stoics, ...
There is no power like that of prevailing prayer - of Abraham pleading for Sodom, Jacob wrestling in the stillness of the night, Moses standing in the breach, Hannah intoxicated with sorrow, David heartbroken with remorse and grief, Jesus in sweat an...
I didn't really have an interest in politics when I first entered the workforce. What I wanted to do was help people who grew up like me. When I was a kid growing up in Tucson, my father lost his job and we lost everything - including our home. We li...
I am a perfectionist but I know how to live life. When I'm working, it's 100%. When I'm with my friends, I put everything away and enjoy life. When I come home to my kids, it's pure joy and everything's worth it. Every time, I really focus 100 percen...
Should the research worker of the future discover some means of releasing this [atomic] energy in a form which could be employed, the human race will have at its command powers beyond the dream of scientific fiction, but the remotest possibility must...
To experience thinking outside the brain is to enter a world of instantaneous connections that make ordinary thinking (i.e those aspects limited by the physical brain and the speed of light_ seem like some hopelessly sleepy and plodding event. Our tr...
The late Mr. , in his posthumous works, places the powers of generation much above those of our boasted reason; and adds, that reason can only make a machine, as a clock or a ship, but the power of generation makes the maker of the machine; ... he co...
Another very good test some readers may want to look up, which we do not have space to describe here, is the Casimir effect, where forces between metal plates in empty space are modified by the presence of virtual particles. Thus virtual particles ar...
Ever since the beginning of the middle-class era, with its faith in progress, belief in progress has dominated the upbringing of children too. Childhood now came to be understood only as the preliminary stage on the way to the full personhood of the ...
Lastly, and doubtless always, but particularly at the end of the last century, certain scholars considered that since the appearances on our scale were finally the only important ones for us, there was no point in seeking what might exist in an inacc...
I look upon every good man, as a good book, lent by its owner for another to read, and transcribe the excellent notions and golden passages that are in it for his own benefit, that they may return with him when the owner shall call for the book again...
Stratwitch: What are you doing over here by the wire? Hilts: Well, like I told Max here, I was trying to get my... German Soldier: [Voice] Achtung! [Von Luger enters] Von Luger: What were you doing by the wire? Hilts: Well, like I told Max... I was t...
Col. Hans Landa: So who are your three handsome escorts? Bridget von Hammersmark: I'm afraid neither of the three speak a word of German. They're friends of mine from Italy. This is the wonderful Italian stuntman, Enzo Gorlomi; a very talented camera...
Herr Zeller: Perhaps those who would warn you that the Anschluss is coming - and it is coming, Captain - perhaps they would get further with you by setting their words to music. Captain von Trapp: If the Nazis take over Austria, I have no doubt, Herr...
Lili Von Shtupp: [singing] Here I stand, the goddess of desire / Set men on fire / I have this power. / Morning, noon, and night, it's dwink and dancing / Some quick womancing / And then a shower. / Stage door Johnnies constantly suwwound me / They a...
I am an old man, and I here declare that I never knew them to be productive of any good in the worship of God, and have reason to believe that they are productive of much evil. Music as a science I esteem and admire, but instrumental music in the hou...
I observed on most collected stones the imprints of innumerable plant fragments which were so different from those which are growing in the Lyonnais, in the nearby provinces, and even in the rest of France, that I felt like collecting plants in a new...
As it is the sister of reading, so it is the mother of prayer. Though a man's heart be much indisposed to prayer, yet, if he can but fall into a meditation of God, and the things of God, his heart will soon come off to prayer....Begin with reading or...
