Of course life has a larger meaning

Of course life has a larger meaning. I feel this every time I find a parking place close to the mall.
~ Lori Villamil

I myself know nothing

I myself know nothing, except just a little, enough to extract an argument from another who is wise and to receive it fairly.
~ Socrates

The ends of things are always painful

"People ask me, “Do you have optimism about the world?” And I say, “Yes, it’s great just the way it is. And you are not going to fix it up. Nobody has ever made it any better. It is never going to be any better. This is it, so take it or leave it. You are not going to correct or improve it.”

It is joyful just as it is. I don’t believe there was anybody who intended it, but this is the way it is. James Joyce has a memorable line: “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” And the way to awake from it is not to be afraid, and to recognize that all of this, as it is, is a manifestation of the horrendous power that is of all creation. The ends of things are always painful. But pain is part of there being a world at all."
~ Joseph Campbell

There is no truth

 “There is no truth, except truth for me.”
~ Kierkegaard

You can’t postpone dealing with reality

You can’t postpone dealing with reality any longer.
~ Robert W. Smith

The world’s a failure

The world’s a failure, you know. Someone, somewhere, made a terrible mistake.
~ Mission Impossible

Call the name of Lucifer

The world has always been ruled by Lucifer. The world is evil. Call his name, my love. Call the name of Lucifer.
~ Ritual of Evil

Evil strides the world

Let us confess it: evil strides the world.
~ Voltaire

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
~ Albert Schweitzer

Life is a comedy to those who think

Life is a comedy to those who think,a tragedy to those who feel.
~ Horace Walpole

The young man who has not wept is a savage

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.
~ Confucius

What’s the use of all your damn books?

Zorba: Why do the young die? Why does anybody die, tell me?
Scholar: I don’t know.
Zorba: What’s the use of all your damn books? If they don’t tell you that, what the hell do they tell you?
Scholar: They tell me about the agony of men who can’t answer questions like yours.
~ Nikos Kazantzakis - Zorba the Greek

Old age is painful

Birth is painful, old age is painful, sickness is painful, death is painful …
The Buddha

There is no hope

“There is no hope.”
“We’re both alive. And for all I know, that’s hope.”
~ “Henry II” The Lion in Winter

He who has a why to live

“He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”
~ Nietzsche

To live is to suffer

“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.”
~ Viktor Frankl

Nothing to lose except ones so ridiculously naked life

"What does one do when he finally realizes that he has “nothing to lose except his so ridiculously naked life”? First come feelings of detachment and curiosity about what is happening, followed by thoughts of hopeful strategies that might be used to salvage anything that is left. Feelings of hunger, fear, and pro- found anger are never far below the surface; a deep humiliation colors every thought; and these feelings become the true enemies of personal growth. These brute facts are softened and made tolerable by cherished images of loved ones, by one’s faith, by a grim sense of humor, and even by fleeting glimpses of the healing beauties of nature such as a green tree, a flower by a fence, or a sunset."

That’s relativity

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute—it’s longer than an hour. That’s relativity!
~ Albert Einstein

Soon he will not know what he wants to do

"Modern humans are caught in an “existential vacuum,” writes the psychologist Viktor Frankl. We are struck with the total meaninglessness of our lives. Increasingly we find nothing worth living for. There is an inner emptiness within us all. We can understand this spiritual void, for it has two sources that have emerged since we began to be human beings. The first was the loss of our instincts, that set of instruc- tions that we, along with all the other animals, carried embedded in our very natures. That was an ancient loss. A more recent trauma to our souls happened when we lost the binding myths and traditions that secured our behavior. Modern man is there- fore lost, Frankl writes, for “no instinct tells him what to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; soon he will not know what he wants to do.”"

Then move to Florida and die

Get a job, make some money, work till you’re sixty, then move to Florida and die.
~ Daniel Quinn

Educated people try to be conscious of their hidden prejudices

Educated people try to be conscious of their hidden prejudices and to measure them against the facts and against the sensibilities of others.
~ Steven Pinker

Hell is no fable

"“To exist is to suffer,” taught the Buddha, and we have devised ingenious ways of escaping existence. We sense a futility in our dreams; an inner voice chides us for yearning for goals we can’t achieve. We often have an empty feeling when we hold in our hands something we have fought for, wondering why we wanted it. All around we see loneliness, surd hatreds, and pointless sadisms. Mephistopheles speaks for many: “Hell is no fable, for this life IS hell.” Away from all this, we are pulled toward death, as though it would be a blessing to have done with it."

Every man is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
~ Bertrand Russell

To act wisely in the world

To act wisely in the world, it is necessary to know that world and understand it.
~ Richard I. Aaron

The world destroys our humanity by the sheer weight of its insanity

"Evolution has succeeded in producing a sentient creature who thinks and feels, aspires, lays plans, and constructs beautiful futures to work toward. We dream dreams—and then discover that the world is designed to crush, not to fulfill, those dreams. We are prepared to live with goodness but find we must perpetually wrestle with evil. Driven by instinct to self-preservation, we never rest from having to face death. We cherish honesty, but find that neither the universe nor humankind is equipped for honesty. The world thus destroys our humanity by the sheer weight of its insanity."

What you’re really looking for is an experience of being alive

 “People talk about looking for the meaning of life; what you’re really looking for is an experience of being alive.”
~ Joseph Campbell

How much more powerful a quantum computer could be

If you imagine the difference between an abacus and the world’s fastest supercomputer, you would still not have the barest inkling of how much more powerful a quantum computer could be compared with the computers we have today.
~ Julian Brown

The wave function

"They solve the problem in a peculiar way. In the absence of a real wave, they imagine an abstract wave—a mathematical wave. If this sounds ludicrous, this was pretty much the reaction of physicists when the idea was first proposed by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in the 1920s. Schrödinger imagined an abstract mathematical wave that spread through space, encountering obstacles and being reflected and transmitted, just like a water wave spreading on a pond. In places where the height of the wave was large, the probability of finding a particle was highest, and in locations where it was small, the probability was lowest. In this way Schrödinger’s wave of probability christened the wave function, informed a particle what to do, and not just a photon—any microscopic particle, from an atom to a constituent of an atom like an electron."

There is perfect symmetry

"To get agreement between the two pictures of light, the particle-like aspect of light must somehow be “informed” about how to behave by its wavelike aspect. In other words, in the microscopic domain, waves do not simply behave like particles; those particles behave like waves as well! There is perfect symmetry. In fact, in a sense this statement is all you need to know about quantum theory (apart from a few details). Everything else follows unavoidably. All the weirdness, all the amazing richness of the microscopic world, is a direct consequence of this wave-particle “duality” of the basic building blocks of reality."

We can only predict the odds

"Physics has given up on the problem of trying to predict what would happen in a given circumstance. We can only predict the odds.”
~ Richard Feynman

To play dice or not to

“God does not play dice with the Universe!”
~ Einstein
"Not only does God play dice with the Universe, he throws the dice where we cannot see them!”
~ Stephen Hawking

It is truly something new under the Sun

"Nothing in the everyday world is fundamentally unpredictable; nothing is truly random. The reason we cannot predict the outcome of a game of roulette or of the toss of a coin is that there is simply too much information for us to take into account. But in principle—and this is the key point—there is nothing to prevent us from predicting both.

Contrast this with the microscopic world of photons. It matters not the slightest how much information we have in our possession. It is impossible to predict whether a given photon will be transmitted or reflected by a window—even in principle. A roulette ball does what it does for a reason—because of the interplay of myriad subtle forces. A photon does what it does for no reason whatsoever! The unpredictability of the microscopic world is fundamental. It is truly something new under the Sun."

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we teach the wave theory

“On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we teach the wave theory and on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays the particle theory,”
~ joked the English physicist William Bragg in 1921

Another person will not do you harm unless you wish it

“Remember that what is insulting is not the person who abuses you or hits you, but the judgment about them that they are insulting. Another person will not do you harm unless you wish it; you will be harmed at just that time at which you take yourself to be harmed.”
~ Epictetus

You have to accept the whole bloody universe

“If you want to accept life, you have to accept the whole bloody universe.”
~ Alexei Panshin - Rite of Passage

What’s running the show

 “What’s running the show is what’s coming up from way down below.”
~  Joseph Campbell

What a crew they are

"Eating, sleeping, copulating, excreting, and the like; what a crew they are!”
~ Marcus Aurelius

To know how many are jealous of you

“To know how many are jealous of you, count your admirers.”
~ Seneca

A thought which is not independent

 “A thought which is not independent is a thought only half understood.”
~ Wittgenstein

Governing a large country

“Governing a large country is like frying a small fish. You can ruin it with too much poking.”
~ Lao-tzu

Some people try to shut off the questions at this point

"What happens, for most of us, is that we get vague, unsatisfactory answers from grown-ups. At first we think they know better answers and are too busy to share the secrets with us. Later, we learn that they may not know either. Some people try to shut off the questions at this point, to concentrate on other things like making friends and money, seeking pleasure, popularity, and love. And, it works—for a while. But, the big questions have a way of coming back, especially during those moments when life gets our attention by stopping the ordinary flow of events with something startling and unexpected. A parent or friend dies young; a loved one betrays us; a cherished dream goes unfulfilled. At times like these, the questions come surging back. What is the purpose of life anyway? Does anything really matter? Are we on a short, unpleasant march toward death?"

In philosophical arguments, everyone wins

"Not the usual kinds of argument in which egos fight to win, but philosophical arguments in which the participants attempt to clarify the reasoning that lies behind their statements; and no one cares about winning since, in philosophical arguments, everyone wins."

There is someone who will struggle against being manipulated

"And there is some value in knowing just that: that in this world of adversary rhetoric and arbitrary partisanship, there is someone who will struggle against being manipulated and polarized. He will only partially succeed. He may reach moments of greater clarity and then fall back into a one-sided point of view, but then, like Kant, he will arouse himself from his “dogmatic slumbers” and start to work again fitting together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle."

The philosopher must stand apart

"The philosopher must stand apart, as best he can, to keep life in perspective. The party members won’t do it, nor will the fearful, the brain-washed, the prejudiced, or the bigoted. But there must be someone. There must be someone who remains sensitively aware of the essential humanness in all thought and action. There must be someone who tries to stay as close to the realities as possible, someone who tries, keeps on trying, and will not give up."

I have a much larger responsibility toward the whole human family

"I am, however, Tibetan before I am Dalai Lama, and I am human before I am Tibetan. So while as Dalai Lama I have a special responsibility to Tibetans, and as a monk I have a special responsibility toward furthering interreligious har- mony, as a human being I have a much larger responsibility toward the whole human family—which indeed we all have."

Since my house burned down

Since my house burned down,
I now own a better view
Of the rising moon

~ Masahide

If the only tool you have is a hammer

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
~  Abraham Maslow

When states can no longer distinguish good men

“When states can no longer distinguish good men from bad men, they will perish.”
~  Antisthenes the Athenian Cynic

If I am not I, who will be?

“If I am not I, who will be?”
~ Thoreau

What could possibly be worth sacrificing satisfaction in order to obtain?

"I would argue, though, that what is really foolish is to spend your life in a state of self-induced dissatisfaction when satisfaction lies within your grasp, if only you will change your mental outlook. To be able to be satisfied with little is not a failing, it is a blessing—if, at any rate, what you seek is satisfaction. And if you seek something other than satisfaction, I would inquire (with astonishment) into what it is that you find more desirable than satisfaction. What, I would ask, could possibly be worth sacrificing satisfaction in order to obtain?"

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing

“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.”
~ Marcus Aurelius

Every day without fail one should consider himself as dead

"Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead."
~ Yamamato Tsunetomo

Vain is the word of a philosopher

“Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.”
~ Epicurus

A barely concealed death wish

"Socrates commented that those who bought food out of season, at an extravagant price, revealed a fear that they would not live until the proper season came round again: ‘Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die’, is a barely concealed death wish."

Induction cannot be rationally justified

"Another popular response is to admit that induction cannot be rationally justified, but to argue that this is not really so problematic after all. How might one defend such a position? Some philosophers have argued that induction is so fundamental to how we think and reason that it's not the sort of thing that could be justified. Peter Strawson, an influential contemporary philosopher, defended this view with the following analogy. If someone worried about whether a particular action was legal, they could consult the law-books and compare the action with what the law-books say. But suppose someone worried about whether the law itself was legal. This is an odd worry indeed. For the law is the standard against which the legality of other things is judged, and it makes little sense  to enquire whether the standard itself is legal. The same applies to  induction, Strawson argued. Induction is one of the standards we use to decide whether claims about the world are justified. For example, we use induction to judge whether a pharmaceutical company's claim about the amazing benefits of its new drug are justified. So it makes little sense to ask whether induction itself is justified."

Our confidence in induction is just blind faith

"So the position is this. Hume points out that our inductive inferences rest on the uniformity of nature assumption. But we cannot prove that uniformity of nature is true, and we cannot produce empirical evidence for its truth without begging the question. So our inductive inferences rest on an assumption about the world for which we have no good grounds. Hume concludes that our confidence in induction is just blind faith - it admits of no rational justification whatever."

Scientific hypotheses can rarely be proved true by the data

"The central role of induction in science is sometimes obscured by the way we talk. For example, you might read a newspaper report that says that scientists have found 'experimental proof that genetically modified maize is safe for humans. What this means is that the scientists have tested the maize on a large number of humans, and none of them have come to any harm. But strictly speaking this doesn't prove that the maize is safe, in the sense in which mathematicians can prove Pythagoras' theorem, say. For the inference from 'the maize didn't harm any of the people on whom it was tested' to 'the maize will not harm anyone' is inductive, not deductive. The newspaper report should really have said that scientists have found extremely good evidence that the maize is safe for humans. The word 'proof should strictly only be used when we are dealing with deductive inferences. In this strict sense of the word, scientific hypotheses can rarely, if ever, be proved true by the data."

When you have eliminated the impossible

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
~ Sherlock Holmes - The Sign of Four

Another brick to the temple of science

“We speak piously of . . . making small studies that will add another brick to the temple of science. Most such bricks just lie around the brickyard.”
~ John R. Platt

You can observe a lot by just watching.

You can observe a lot by just watching.
—Yogi Berra

You know my methods. Apply them.

You know my methods. Apply them.
—Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four

Pseudoscientific theories do not actually have any explanatory teeth

"Rather counterintuitively, Popper also thought that scientific theories cannot ever be proven, because they are always open to the possibility that a new observation—hitherto unknown—will falsify them. For instance, I could observe thousands of four-legged dogs and grow increasingly confident that my theory is right. But then I could turn a corner and see an adult two-legged dog: there goes the theory, falsified by one negative result, regardless of how many positive confirmations I had on my notepad up to that point. In this view of the difference between science and pseudoscience, then, science makes progress not by proving its theories right— because that’s impossible—but by eliminating an increasing number of wrong theories. Pseudoscience, however, does not make progress because its “theories” are so flexible that they can accommodate any observation whatsoever, which means that pseudoscientific theories do not actually have any explanatory teeth."

Beyond the possibilities of knowledge

"The foundation of morality is to . . . give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about this beyond the possibilities of knowledge.”
~ Thomas Henry Huxley

It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood

‘It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.’
~ Popper

Theory has to come first

"Popper used to begin his lecture course on the philosophy of science by asking the students simply to ‘observe’. Then he would wait in silence for one of them to ask  what they were supposed to observe. This was his way of demonstrating one of many flaws in the empiricism that is still part of common sense today. So he would explain to them that scientific observation is impossible without pre-existing knowledge about what to look at, what to look for, how to look, and how to interpret what one sees. And he would explain that, therefore, theory has to come first. It has to be conjectured, not derived."

Present-day methods of education

"Present-day methods of education still have a lot in common with their static-society predecessors. Despite modern talk of encouraging critical thinking, it remains the case that teaching by rote and inculcating standard patterns of behaviour through psychological pressure are integral parts of education, even though they are now wholly or partly renounced in explicit theory. Moreover, in regard to academic knowledge, it is still taken for granted, in practice, that the main purpose of education is to transmit a standard curriculum faithfully. One consequence is that people are acquiring scientific knowledge in an anaemic and instrumental way. Without a critical, discriminating approach to what they are learning, most of them are not effectively replicating the memes of science and reason into their minds. And so we live in a society in which people can spend their days conscientiously using laser technology to count cells in blood samples, and their evenings sitting cross-legged and chanting to draw supernatural energy out of the Earth."

It’s not necessary to live

"“What’s necessary is to sail, it’s not necessary to live!”
shouted Pompey the Great to his frightened sailors after ordering them to weigh anchor in a heavy storm."