The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future resear...
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity...and some scare see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imaginat...
I will not be defined by the marks left on me by the world, but by the mark I leave on the world (referring to the facial scars he still carries from his successful 1991 battle against cancer, which caused him to be turned down for a customer service...
No matter how well meaning and astute the investigators are or how well-researched, witnessed and documented the incidents of cruelty are, a prison is a prison is a prison. The structure of authority that produces the oppressed and the oppressor alik...
Ah, the boo. The boo is the most maligned, gossiped about, ridiculed figure in the pantheon of prison characters. Boo, which is short for the street term "booty call," is the casual girlfriend, the cheap feel in the sally port, the temporary object o...
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why. Science fiction dreams of the things that never were and asks why not? The answer to which is often "Because it might not be very wise." But, as that has never stopped humans before......
Propositions are to stories (and to reality) as powdered milk is to what comes from the udder. Propositions are dried-out stories with much of the vitality removed. They may say something technically true, just as powdered milk is still technically a...
Socialism is the gradual and less violent form of communism, and socialist is the project of the European Union, which was born in Maastricht in 1992. The intent was to save socialism in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the predictable ba...
We've never lived in an environment in which it has been so easy to capture information and share it. That fact that it is digital and easy to transmit exacerbates that. I don't know that we know yet what social norms we wish to adopt.
All children are heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking things and leap so very high that grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow o...
Dou comigo a pensar se figuras de estilo não serão, afinal, as silhuetas dos corpos humanos que tão ardentemente desejamos ou abominamos. I find myself wondering if figures of speech are not, after all, the silhouettes of human bodies which we so ...
I think it is quite remarkable actually that Pope Benedict has a sense of the variety of ways in which it is possible to be a Catholic. I think he is more comfortable with a plurality of expressions of Catholicism in different rites, traditions than ...
The goal of socialism is a fairer allocation of economic resources, which its advocates often claim will also be a less wasteful one. Socialism is about who gets the goods and how. Socialism objects to markets because markets allocate resources in wa...
Indeed, Russia and the U.S. were allies during the two tragic conflicts of the Second and the First World Wars, which allows us to think there's something objectively bringing us together in difficult times, and I think - I believe - it has to do wit...
I have never stated Russia is an energy superpower, but we have more reserves than almost anybody else. We have always behaved, and we will continue to behave, in a responsible way. We intend to participate in the elaboration of common rules in the e...
I write fast. But it takes me a while to get going. It's very important for me to see my whole plot. I have to see the end first because I like a surprise in the end. Which is why I let characters and plot gestate in my mind.
My biggest hobby is playing golf, which I really enjoy. Now when I am lying in bed at night, unable to sleep, I find myself thinking about my golf swing. I'm also involved in the Tampa Bay chapter of First Tee.
My first job, which I had to take when not more than fifteen, was assistant to a fruit peddler. It seemed all right to me until a little girl told me snootily, 'We never deal with peddler!' Thereupon I resigned, ashamed of what I was doing.
Therefore I do pray and entreat you in the name of Jesus Christ to do so much as to make my being here in Japan known to my poor wife, in a manner a widow and my two children fatherless; which thing only is my greatest grief of heart and conscience.
Although peace can be negotiated by governments, it is ultimately the responsibility of the people themselves to make it last. All of us have a role to play to create a world in which peace can flourish.
I think that both parties should declare the debt limit as a political weapon of mass destruction which can't be used. I mean, it is silly to have a country that has 237 years building up its reputation and then have people threaten to tear it down b...
