Quotes that have touched me (page 1 of 16) Disclaimer: Citation of a quote, below, does not necessarily imply that I agree with what it asserts (under whatever interpretation); it does mean I feel the text says something seriously worth thinking about. Date Text Source   Go to more recent entries  [Index] 05Dec99  [44] "[T]he independent Institute of Medicine... estimated that in hospitals alone mistakes... kill as many as 98,000 people yearly....'To err is human,' the institute panel concluded, 'but errors can be prevented.' [/] The vast majority of medical mistakes are committed not by bad apples, [Dr. Donald Berwick, president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement] says, but by good doctors trying to do the right thing, working under conditions that do not account for the fact that they are human.... 'You don't get to safe systems that have human beings in them by yelling at them or asking them to try harder,' Dr. Berwick said. 'You need to engineer the work environment so that normal human limits are respected." More from Dr. Berwick, NYT on the Web, 01Apr01, "So, the Tumor Is on the Left, Right?", by Jennifer Steinhauser: "[T]he remedy is not to say, 'Who did it, and how could they be so stupid?... but rather, 'How has our system led to such dire consequences, and how can we make the system so robust that we can account for predictable human frailty?' [Steinhauser:] Medical error experts also agree that the stigma of reporting mistakes has to be removed." "Do No Harm: Breaking Down Medicine's Culture of Silence", by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, NYT, 05Dec99, Week in Review (sec.4 p.1). This relates to an NPR discussion (ref. lost), in which a liberal analyst said that one of the objectives of some "conservative" agenda is to structure systems in ways that will not make it (1) easy for persons to do the constructive thing and/or (2) difficult for them to fail, since such systems do not test character. Item: In a review of Gertrude Himmelfarb's One Nation, Two Cultures ("The Moral Minority", NYT Book Review, 19Dec99, p.14), U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner wrote that the "social conservative... Himmelfarb... wants to make premarital sex dangerous in order to discourage it.... She is onto something: the more dangerous sex is, the less of it there will be. But, as she neglects to add, a higher fraction of the reduced number of sexual encounters will result in an unwanted pregnancy or the spreading of sexual disease, so that the total number of such misfortunes may be higher." (Do you know: a secret of the helping professions?) See also: Voting systems not designed to make it as easy as possible for the voter to select the candidate they wanted, and as difficult as possible to make mistakes or do things that would invalidate their ballot affected outcome of U.S. 2000 Presidential election. See also: "Experts Warn of Mars on the Cheap: Say Stinting on Time, People and Money Led to Lost Missions", William J. Broad, NYT, 08Dec99, p.A19: "'We fell into cutting too many corners.' a senior official at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory... which designed the two [failed] spacecraft [the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter and $165 million Mars Polar Lander] said.... 'We have to be smarter.' John E. Pike, head of space policy at the Federation of American Scientists... said NASA's climate orbiter investigation showed that the Mars program had been desparately short of time, personnel and money, with designers pushed to the breaking point. 'We've all seen this,' Mr. Pike said. 'Anybody who has tried to do too much work without enough people immediately recognizes the symptoms. Stuff doesn't get done. Things fail.' The common problem behind the setbacks, Mr. Pike added, 'is some combination of inadequate funding and inadequate management preparation for low-budget missions.'"[fn.10b] See also: 16Feb00 entry, above. 22Nov99  [43] "If you know you've written something that's OK, then you're a songwriter. If not, then forget it." Hoagy Carmichael (songwriter). Heard on National Public Radio Morning Edition, Monday, 22Nov99. [I (BMcC) think this notion of recognizing the value of what you've done is a qualification for any craft, art, science, etc.] 28Sep99  [42] "...the World War II generation bequeathed to its baby boomer sons its own definitions and requisites for manhood: the promise of a frontier to conquer, the promise of 'a clear and evil enemy to be crushed,' the promise 'of an institution of brotherhood in which anonymous members could share a greater institutional' glory and the 'promise of a family to provide for and protect.' [/] Unfortunately for the sons, Ms. Faludi goes on, the rules of the game had changed by the time they came of age. Space, which was supposed to be the new frontier, proved 'a place not much worth conquering.' Vietnam provided no clear-cut mission, no moral payoff. And the institutions that were supposed to provide 'masculine honor and pride' in exchange for loyalty all too often turned out to be corporations willing to sacrifice their employees to downsizing." Book review of Susan Faludi's Stiffed: The betrayal of the American man, by Michiko Kakutani, NYT, 28Sep99, p.E8. See also article from front page of 30Sep99 NYT, "Poland's Glossy Capitalism Displays a Darker Underside", by Roger Cohen: "In the entrance to the offices of his growing movement, called Self-Defense, Andrej Lepper displays a framed quotation from Pope John Paul II: 'It is unacceptable to claim that after the fall of Communism, capitalism is the only alternative'.... [/] ...And Poland, like the rest of Central Europe, has discovered that a rising capitalist tide does not lift all boats. Some are bound to sink, not necessarily in silence." 15Jul99  [41] "...[T]he important thing is to set up an environment that makes it okay to try things and explore. Every experience that students have in school pushes them in the opposite direction. We want to say that it is okay to fail, it is okay to try something that doesn't work out. We're going to reward a spectacular failure in that same way we reward a success; that's not true in most situations." David Kelley (speaking about the engineering program at Stanford Univ.), in Bringing Design to Software, Terry Winograd, Ed., Addison-Wesley, 1996, p.155. 21Apr99  [40] "When I began [working in a garment industry sweatshop], I believed that mindless work would actually allow for an active mind: that with nothing to think about, it would be possible to think. In fact, small repetitive tasks, done under pressure, remove any chance of thought, except possibly one or two small thoughts, irritatingly small thoughts, which, like the work itself, are also endlessly repeated." Bill Buford, "A Reporter at Large: Sweat is Good", The New Yorker, 26Apr/03May99, p.133. 23Jan99  [39] "Reason, art and poetry are no help in deciphering a place from which they have been banished." Primo Levi, in The Drowned and the Saved, cited in NYT Book Review (24Jan99, p.7), of Primo Levi: Tragedy of an Optimist, by Myriam Antissov. 10Oct98  [38] "[M]odern conservatism, which began as a movement of personal liberation from the state and intellectual skepticism in response to ideological certainty, has become its precise opposite.... David Frum... would return the movement to its 1980's emphasis on tax cuts and smaller government[, b]ut his rationale for such a move ... is revealing. He wants to limit government not to expand personal freedom, but to so rob the middle class of financial security that they would have little choice but to return to the social mores of the 1950's. In order not to fall through the widening cracks of the vanishing welfare state, Americans would have no option... but to strengthen family ties, avoid divorce and cling more carefully to children, spouses and parents." Andrew Sullivan, "Going down screaming", NYT Sunday Magazine, 11Oct98, p.90. Also: "The only possible hope in [the current cultual situation], according to [Robert] Bork, is either a fundamentalist religious revival or a sobering great depression. (Bork seems to welcome both possibilities.) Or, if all else fails, a restitution of government censorship.... When asked... what an American Civil Liberties Lawyer would say about this, Bork replied that the lawyer would say, '"You are inhibiting my liberty and my right to express myself." And the answer to that is, Yes, that is precisely what we are after.'" (ibid.) 10Oct98  [37] "Whereas Richard Nixon committed crimes for which he then had to answer, the alleged crime of Bill Clinton, perjury, did not occur until he was questioned under oath. Adulterous behavior may be a sin, but it is not a crime. On the other hand, if you can bring someone into a courtroon to equivocate about it, it is convertible to a crime." E.L. Doctorow, "Has Starr humiliated us all?", The New Yorker, 12Oct98, p.29. (Ed. note: Consider how the concept of "the social construction of reality" applies to such cases.) Read more about the conservatives' persecution of President Clinton: Click here. 01Aug98  [36] "No one should expect an honest answer to a question which no one is entitled to ask.... In this instance, a lot of things matter more than the truth." Matt Miller (Senior Writer, U.S. News and World Report), National Public Radio Morning Edition (31Jul98), "Halting the Lewinsky Madness". 11Jul98  [35] "French fashion people... like their businessmen erudite and protective.... [Christian] Dior... put his talent in the service of his workers' skills with a humility that manifested itself whenever he encountered an employee, however lowly, in one of the house's corridors. Invariably, Dior would step aside to let the employee pass." Holly Brubach, NYT Magazine (12Jul98, p.29, "And Luxury for All", an article about Bernard Arnault, who has bought up Dior and other producers of luxury items: "Arnault reportedly keeps walking, head down. He has not taken the time to get to know the people at Dior...." (p.29) --For a personal example of respect for those "beneath one", see: my father's story; For a personal example of less gracious behavior, see: Wilful rudeness at the entrance to the men's restroom.) 27Jun98  [34] "So is there a beast wrestling with an angel in each of us? ....[My mother] affirmed her belief one day in 1940 as she ran desparately around Berlin wondering how she and I -- marked as Jews and also as Polish 'enemy aliens' in wartime -- might obtain a permit to escape from Nazi Germany at last. She came upon a commissioner of police who, though angered by her invasion of his office, nonetheless dared to close the door and whisper the name and location of the Gestapo chief to whom she should apply. As she thanked him and turned to leave, the commissioner suddenly asked, Where did you say you want to go?" [reply:] To America. [commissioner:] If you get there, will you tell them we're not all bad? To her last day, she did." Max Frankel, NYT Book Review (28Jun98, p.7; review of: A Nation on Trial: The Goldenhagen Thesis and Historical Truth). See also: 13Feb00 entry, above. 31May98  [33] "I am most truly a protestant; for I protest indifferently against all Systems, and all Sects." Pierre Bayle (quoted in footnote 5, p.192, Anthony Grafton, The Footnote, Harvard Univ. Press, 1997) 30May98  [32] "The Internet might be defined as the largest experiment in human anarchy." Kim Polese, spoken at: Harvard Conference on Internet & Society (May98), quoted in PC WORLD Online, "Marimba's Polese Endorses Internet 'Anarchy'", by Nancy Weil, IDG News Service, 29May98 27May98  [31] Alas... Galileo, your devoted friend and servant, has for a month been totally and incurably blind; so that this heaven, this earth, this universe, which by my remarkable observations and clear demonstrations I have enlarged a hundred, nay, a thousand fold beyond the limits universally accepted by the learned men of all previous ages, are now shrivelled up for me into such a narrow compass as is filled by my own bodily sensations. Galileo Galilei, in his old age (quoted by J. Bronowski, in The Ascent of Man, Little, Brown and Co., 1973, p.218) 20May98  [30] "If someone has a pain in his hand ... one does not comfort the hand, but the sufferer: One looks into his face" ([Philosophical Investigations] §286). In this mode Wittgenstein can speak about the intricate way in which what is usually called "the self" and "the body" are related, without setting up theoretical terms for how it is that the one we comfort is not in the hand, or how that one has (owns, observes, feels, lives in, lives with ..... ) the hand, and that we find (reach, communicate with .....) the person in the face. No existing theory approaches the intricacy of what Wittgenstein's simple statement says. E.T. Gendlin, What Happens When Wittgenstein Asks "What Happens When ...?", Philosophical Forum, XXVIII. 3, Spring 1997 20May98  [29] You see here [by Intel and Microsoft creating technologies like "Chrome," a new multimedia rendering technology which requires a 350MHz Pentium II, 64MB of memory and AGP graphics...] the continuation of the Wintel logic. Standard applications are no longer taxing standard PCs. The answer: Create more taxing applications. PCWeek Online, "Don't get caught in Wintel's speed trap" (18May98), by Scot Peterson. 27Apr98  [28] [I]n a note appended to [one of his] song[s, Woody] Guthrie seemed to invite reinterpretation of his work: "I made this one up like you see her right here on this action block and I like her just the way she is," it read. "But if you want to take her and change her a little bit for the better then by grobs grab 'er an' make er happy. W.G." "New Glimpses of Woody Guthrie's Imagination", by Peter Applebome (NYT, 27Apr98, pp.E1,E3). 12Apr98  [27] "You mean I lose because I'm polite?" [5-year-old] Chitose-chan's eyes asked. "You mean the point of the game is to be rude?" [--]Well, now that I think of it, I guess that is the point. American kids are taught to be winners, to seize their opportunities and maybe the next kid's as well. Japanese children are taught to be good citizens, to be team players, to obey rules, to be content to be a mosaic tile in some larger design.... Japan desparately needs to restructure itself, which is to say that it needs to create losers -- companies need to lay off excess workers, Mom-and-Pop rice shops need to be replaced by more efficient supermarkets.... "In Japan, Nice Guys (And Girls) Finish Together", by Nicholas Kristof (Week in Review, NYT, 12Apr98, p.7). Story is about a fifth birthday party the author gave for his son, in Tokyo, at which the Japanese children were introduced to the Western children's game musical chairs. 02Apr98  [26] "Problem-solving techniques can't tell us what the problems are." Prof. Douglas Sloan, Teachers College Columbia University (quoted in NETFUTURE #68) 29Mar98  [25] ...Shiite Islam is not terribly hierarchical, and a Shiite clergyman is actually forbidden to obey another blindly; each is required to use his own judgment on any given issue. "Duelling Mullahs: Iran's Gladhander Takes on the Leader", by Elaine Sciolino (NYT, Week in Review, 29Mar98, p.4). Article is about the politics of Iranian government in the post-Khomeini period, and especially since the election of Mohammed Khatami as President. I would juxtapose the cited text with, e.g., Emmanuel Kant's What is Enlightenment?, and the Unitarian dictum: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good" (1 Thes. 5:21). 24Jan98  [24] ...[T]he Army Corps of Engineers clos[ed] a dam on the Columbia River before the fish ladders were ready so that it could be dedicated on schedule (causing 200,000 adult salmon to hurl themselvese to death against its concrete). Thurston Clarke, NYT Book Review, 25Jan98, p.11, in a review of Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World's Coasts and Beneath the Seas, by Carl Safina. (Ed. note: History is littered with human lives sacrificed to similarly vain "accomplishments" and "aspirations", as, e.g., Stanley Kubrick's film, "Paths of Glory", showed. I once saw a sign in a cobbler's shop: "One man's dream boat has often turned out to be another man's destroyer.") 17Jan98  [23] Lars Tunbjork... recently photographed [offices] at several Manhattan locations.... To walk into [an office] is to enter into the space of Pragmatism, America's singular contribution to Western philosophy.... Hideous, isn't it? ....Tunbjork... captures the Office's dirty, not-so-little secret[:]... the Mess. We are not supposed to notice the Mess, even when we trip over it. The Mess is pragmatism's deep subconscious, the overflow of stuff that grids cannot contain.... [T]he truth is that, in pragmatic space, the Mess takes over the function once performed by decoration. Piles of paper, masses of cable, disorder of all kinds are often more interesting to look at than the sleek surfaces that have been systematically organized for our viewing pleasure.... People's bodies occupy these spaces, but their minds don't. Their minds are off in a different environment, a space unbounded by Sheetrock and acoustic tile... "the space of flows." This is the world beyond... the monitor screen, where... city squares, the economy of nations... and even sex have been reduced to electronic symbols.... Herbert Muschamp, NYT Sunday Magazine, 18Jan98, pp.32,4. Ed. note: See another perspactive on: what it means when my (BMcC) desk is a mess. 06Sep97  [22] One of the [most troubling] consequences of automation... is the loss of slack, that small amount of excess time or resources that can buffer against uncertainty or unexpected shocks. The desirability of a bit of slack is especially clear in combat and... complex systems like nuclear power plants, where a little time to think or to adjust one's cognitive map to surprising circumstances can be of obvious value. However, engineers and managers tend to see slack as wasteful, and automation is increasingly being used to wring it out of the system. Lawrence Hunter, NYT Book Review, 07Sep97, p.23, in a review of Trapped in the Net: The Unanticipated Consequences of Computerization, by Gene I Rochlin. 15Aug97  [21] If United Parcel Service needs labor that is flexible... it should pay more, not less. When I buy an airline ticket that is flexible and allows changes, I pay more. The airlines would laugh if I asked for flexibility and a lower price. Luiz Homem de Mello (Letter to the Editor, NYT, 15Aug97). Response to labor dispute in which the union is trying to get higher wages for part-time workers, who are paid $9-10 per hour versus over $19 per hour for full time workers; and to limit the number of part-time jobs and get part-time jobs converted to full-time positions. Management says it needs the flexibility of part-time workers to compete. 12Jul97  [20] "Don't compare! Don't compare! All suffering is intolerable." Elie Wiesel (quoted in TIME, 19Sep94, p.94) 12Jul97  [19] But the annual revenue of every society is always precisely equal to the exchangeable value of the whole annual produce of its industry.... As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations: Book 4 Chapter 2 (emphasis added). "A... seldom acknowledged, market principle is that capital must be locally or at least nationally rooted. Neoliberals are fond of citing Adam Smith's argument that the market functions as an invisible hand to translate the decisions of self-interested individuals into outcomes that serve the public good. Now there's only one sentence in the 900 pages of The Wealth of Nations that refers to the invisible hand, and it is very specific that it is by a natural preference for supporting domestic industry that the entrepreneur promotes the larger good. Smith clearly believed investment should be local." (Plenary Presentation by David C. Korten to the Peoples' Summit 1997 (TOES97) Denver, Colorado, June 20, 1997; emphasis added) 06Jul97  [18] "Kids retain 5 percent of what they hear and 10 percent of what they read but 80 percent of what they do and 90 percent of what they teach." Robert Ballard, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, cited from Reinventing Schools, National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering. 06Jul97  [17] The Massachusetts Medical Society recently started an advertising campaign that encourages people to wash their hands more often, pointing out in one radio spot that "any friendly handshake can carry many illnesses." NYT, 06Jul97, Sec.4, p.1,10 26Jun97  [16] An Egyptian court has overturned a year-old ban on the ritual cutting of female genitals in a decision that has been celebrated by Islamic leaders but has outraged human rights advocates.... In striking down the... ban, Judge Abdul Aziz Hamade said... that his ruling did not deal with the practice or its justification, if any, under Islamic doctrine. He said his ruling focused on the legality of the ban, which he said placed undue restrictions on doctors. "Doctors' right to perform their profession according to the law -- which allows them to do surgery -- cannot be restricted by a ministerial decree," Judge Hamade said. NYT, 26Jun97, p.A12, "Egyptian Court Overturns Ban on Cutting of Girls' Genitals". The article gives some background on this practice: "Ritual genital cutting can range from cutting the hood of the clitoris to removing the clitoris and the tissue surrounding the entrance to the vagina. It is typically performed on girls between 4 and 12 years old, and its supporters believe that the operation curbs a girl's sexual appetite and makes her more marriageable. The practice is carried out in dozens of other African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries [besides Egypt]. Most prevalent among Muslims, the practice is also performed by Christians and followers of traditional religions." (ibid.) "In a judgment that women's rights groups say will resonate throughout the Islamic world, Egypt's highest court yesterday upheld a ban on the genital cutting of girls and women.... 'There is nothing in the Koran that authorizes it,' the court said.... [A] Sudanese lawyer based in New York... said... [t]he ruling counters accusations that only outsiders -- 'neo-colonialists' -- in the opinion of some who defend to practice -- are intent on ending it.... Islamic conservatives who defended the practice are not expected to give up the fight.... [One said] the high court made a mistake and the judge would have to answer to God." (NYT, 29Dec97, p.A3) 07Jun97  [15] "Market forces -- if there is no attempt to control them -- will threaten our very idea of civilization." French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, quoted in NYT, 07Jun97, p.6 07Jun97  [14] ...Nike's [the athletic shoe maker's] mythmaking victories and heroic stories inspire comparison beyond sports, often furthered by the company's own unflinching embrace of Fascist-era design motifs.... "Dare I say it -- Gordon and I [Nike designers] do look at Albert Speer's architecture," [John] Hoke admits.... Fascist esthetics "celebrate the rebirth of the body and of community, mediated through the worship of an irresistible leader," Susan Sontag once wrote in a deconstruction of [Leni] Reifenstahl's films that resonates eerily in the context of Nike's approach. They "flow from (and justify) a preoccupation with situations of control, submissive behavior, extravagant effort, and the endurance of pain; they endorse two seemingly opposite states, egomania and servitude." Metropolis, Jun97, p.84, "Domination by design: Nike's products, advertising, headquarters, and retail palaces are defined by the company's relentless drive for design innovation", Randy Gragg. 02Jun97  [13] By voting [the Socialist] party back into office just four years after it suffered a crushing defeat, the French have expressed their deep reservations about the American-led economic reforms they see sweeping the world. Far from suggesting opportunity, globalization is widely equated here with menace and with the country's 12.8 percent unemployment. "The essential message is that our entire political system is in crisis," said Philippe Séguin, a leader of President Jacques Chirac's defeated Gaullist Party. "The French continue to look for the means to master the new world that is upon them and that they do not want to equate always with regression and loss of jobs." NYT, 02Jun97, p.1, "The French Message" -- article concerning the French elections of 1 June 97. 29May97  [12] I have been looking for people who have said out loud what many of us have muttered for quite some time, that is: if you take into account caring for people and the built and "natural" environments, there is no question about "the end of work" coming any time soon. Posted to futurework mailing list (futurework@csf.colorado.edu), by: LBRUSH@vms.cis.pitt.edu, Lisa Brush, Univ. of Pittsburgh 12May97  [11] "Kasparov even believes that in future high-level human-vs-human [chess] competitions, grandmasters should be able to consult chess computers during the match. It's basically the same argument given by educators who believe that students should be free to bring calculators to math tests -- the 'stupid' work of figuring can be done by machine, freeing the human to do the 'creative' work of figuring new combinations." Newsweek, 05May97, "Man vs. Machine: When Garry Kasparov takes on Deep Blue, he'll be fighting for all of us. Whose side are you on?", by Steven Levy, p.56. 01May97  [10] "...[Wole Soyinka] told an audience that included many African-Americans to beware of 'fictionalizing' Africa.... Yes, it is a stirring sight to witness an African leader addressing the United Nations.... 'Never mind,' he challenged, 'that he's just left a nation where millions are on the edge of starvation, where medical care no longer exists... [and] after sounding off on the United Nations podium, he and his entourage detour to the most exclusive medical clinic in Wiesbaden for a routine medical check-up, then stop in London and Paris to pick up million dollar knick-knacks for their wives, cronies and mistresses.... [H]e returns home to sign a few death warrants for his alleged enemies... tried in secret with no more evidence against them than confessions wrung from "witnesses" who have been tortured so brutallly that they cannot even be presented in court'.... And where is home? 'In my head, that's where home is.'" NYT, 01May97, p.C1,10. Interview with Wole Soyinka, Nigerian author, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986 and has dedicated himself to (in the NYT's words:) "Fighting Africa's Enemy Within". "...[Soyinka] has been in exile since November 1994.... He has also learned that he is the target of a death squad. And in March he was charged with treason. For more than 30 years... Mr. Soyinka has been speaking and writing about the need for African writers to act as the conscience of their countries -- or watch hopelessly as their corrupt politicians consolidate their power." 21Apr97  [9] "One of Mr. Hwang's routines... perhaps explains how he could have spent so much of his life glorifying the North Korean authorities: At bedtime, he likes to read fairy tales." NYT, 21Apr97, p.A8. Story about arrival in Seoul of Hwang Jang Yop, a high ranking North Korean defector: "the philosopher behind North Korea's ideology of juche, or self-reliance, which was used to justify its repressive Stalinist rule and cult-like leader worship." [See also: Escapist fantasy in U.S. 1940's popular culture.] 10Apr97  [8] "I learned the significance of my own insignificant life." Frank McCourt, on winning a Pulitzer Prize for his autobiography. NYT, 10Apr97, p.B1 (cf. Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa's notion that, in an infinite universe, every[-]where is a center of the whole) 09Apr97  [7] "The substitute issues from above are matched with a substitute issue from below: corruption." Jurgen Habermas, The Past As Future, p.151 28Mar97  [6] "...[T]ake your time. Think a lot. Think of everything you've got. For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not." Cat Stevens song, on: Footsteps in the Dark / Greatest Hits Volume Two [See my Philosophy and daily life page for more on this issue of: the vulnerability of life to loss of meaning.] 10Feb97  [5] "...there is plenty of reason to distrust men -- and even boys -- in groups. Peter Brook once said that when he was directing the film of 'The Lord of the Flies' the lad who played Piggy came to him in tears in the night before they were to shoot the scene in which his character is killed and said that the boys had told him he would actually die. Had there been no adults in the environment, Brooks said, the murderous denouement of William Golding's merciless novel might well have reproduced itself in real life." The New Yorker, 17Feb97, p.8. Lionel Tiger, "Hazed and Confused: The ties that bind can be cruel" (Op-ed piece about male initiation rites in the military and other places) 06Feb97  [4] "Mattel Inc. said today that net income rose 1.3 percent in the fourth quarter, reflecting two charges, including one for the recall of [its Cabbage Patch Snacktime Kids] doll that chewed children's... fingers and hair." NYT, 06Feb97, p.D4 25Jan97  [3] "Extreme conditions... don't make pleasant people." Patricia Hampl, NYT Book Review, 26Jan97, p.13 [See also: Quote #63, Quote #237.] 16Jan97  [2] "Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men." - Martin Luther King, Jr. posting by tnovae@juno.com, to futurework@csf.colorado.edu 29Dec96  [1] "The danger lies not in the proliferation of monuments [to the victims of Nazi genocide]," [Ulrich Roloff-Momin, Berlin's former Senator for Culture] said. "It lies in forgetting." NYT, 29Dec96, p.11   Go to more recent entries [Index]  If you've read this far, and it has brought to your mind some quote which is significant to you, I'd appreciate if you'd share it with me: bradmcc@cloud9.net

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