It doesn't contain a single idea

The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea.
Mortimer AdlerAdlerG

A turtle up on top of a fence post

Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.
Alex Haley

Cure for an obsession

Cure for an obsession: get another one.
Mason Cooley

To be content with much, impossible

To be content with little is hard; to be content with much, impossible.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

An addict of all normal pleasures

"He seemed an addict of all normal pleasures without being their slave."

All physics is wrong

“All physics is wrong, except where it isn’t"
~ Fermilab’s Boris Kayser

The more things change

The more things change, the more they are the same.
Alphonse Karr

The Scourge of God

"Soon Pauli was corresponding with leading physicists throughout Europe. His letters, signed jokingly “The Scourge of God,” were known for wit and sarcasm as well as scathing criticism. Colleagues reported that he uttered the phrase “Not only is it not right, it is not even wrong” to disparage theories that were seen to lack rigor and testable hypotheses. On one occasion, after Einstein gave a lecture on relativity in Berlin, while senior professors in the audience sat in silence wondering who should ask the first question, the brazen Pauli got up and announced, “What Professor Einstein has just said is not really as stupid as it may have sounded.” On another occasion, he made so many critical remarks about a lecture given by Paul Ehrenfest, a Dutch physicist twenty years his senior, that Ehrenfest told him, “I think I like your publications better than I like you.” Pauli snapped back, “That’s strange. My feeling about you is just the opposite.” The two became friends, and continued to try to one-up each other’s quips. Pauli’s outspoken manner did not endear him to everyone, but he earned the respect of many of his colleagues not just for his brilliance but also for his honesty and forthrightness. Many of them saw him as the “conscience of physics,” and often asked, “What does Pauli think?” when they were presented with a new idea."

Presentism

"Each of us is trapped in a place, a time, and a circumstance, and our attempts to use our minds to transcend those boundaries are, more often than not, ineffective. Like the sponge, we think we are thinking outside the box only because we can’t see how big the box really is. Imagination cannot easily transcend the boundaries of the present, and one reason for this is that it must borrow machinery that is owned by perception. The fact that these two processes must run on the same platform means that we are sometimes confused about which one is running. We assume that what we feel as we imagine the future is what we’ll feel when we get there, but in fact, what we feel as we imagine the future is often a response to what’s happening in the present. "

Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport

“And yet not cloy thy lips with loathed satiety, 　　
But rather famish them amid their plenty, 　　
Making them red and pale with fresh variety— 　　
Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty. 　　
A summer’s day will seem an hour but short, 　　
Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport.” 　　
~ Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis

Are we a computer simulation

　"In the future it is likely that our civilization will reach a level of technology such that it can create incredibly sophisticated computer simulations of human minds and of worlds for those minds to inhabit. Relatively tiny resources will be needed to sustain such simulated worlds – a single laptop of the future could be home to thousands or millions of simulated minds – so in all probability simulated minds will vastly outnumber biological ones. The experiences of both biological and simulated minds will be indistinguishable and both will of course think that they are not simulated, but the latter (who will make up the vast majority of minds) will in fact be mistaken. We naturally couch this argument in terms of hypotheticals about the future, but who is to say that this ‘future’ hasn’t already happened – that such computer expertise has not already been attained and such minds already simulated? We of course suppose that we are not computer-simulated minds living in a simulated world, but that may be a tribute to the quality of the programming."

The Neutrino people

"The cast of historical characters associated with neutrinos included the sharp-witted Wolfgang Pauli, who invoked these particles in the first place to dodge a crisis in physics; the troubled genius Ettore Majorana, who theorized about neutrinos’ mirror twins before disappearing without a trace at the age of thirty-two; and the committed socialist Bruno Pontecorvo, who realized that neutrinos might morph between different types and caused a Cold War ruckus by defecting to the Soviet Union."

Inventing Neutrinos

　　"It was in this heady atmosphere that the neutrino was invented, or willed into existence, in a form of scientific witchcraft to dodge a growing crisis in nuclear physics, long before the presence of such a particle was detected through experiments. When scientists couldn’t account for energy that went missing during radioactive beta decay, one theorist found it necessary to “invent” a new particle to account for the missing energy. The man behind the theoretical wizardry was a brash young physicist by the name of Wolfgang Pauli. "

Intellectual elite of Vienna

　　"It was Pauli’s tutor who introduced him to Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Few physicists understood the elegant but radical theory or grasped its profound implications at the time. Pauli, however, had no trouble diving in. Barely two months out of high school, he wrote a paper of his own on the subject. Determined to pursue a career in physics, he moved to Munich in 1918 to study under Arnold Sommerfeld, a pioneer in the emerging field of quantum mechanics. Pauli’s paper, which had even come to Einstein’s attention, impressed Sommerfeld, who wrote to a colleague about it, noting, “I have around me a really astonishing specimen of the intellectual elite of Vienna in the young Pauli … a first-year student!”"

“Well, you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers.”

"Years after the discovery, Reines confronted the theorist Hans Bethe, who had asserted in his 1934 paper with Rudolf Peierls that “there is no practically possible way of observing the neutrino.” Bethe responded with good humor: “Well, you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers.”"

A scientist is always a detective

“A detective is not always a scientist, but a scientist is always a detective.”

The Pope

"Fermi’s colleagues referred to him as “the Pope” because he was a natural leader and seemed infallible."

Mathematics is metaphysical

　　‘Mathematics has not a foot to stand upon which is not purely metaphysical.’
~ Thomas De Quincey, 1830

The toothpaste discount coupons

"People who don’t worry about whether their mutual-fund manager is keeping 0.5 or 0.6 percent of their investment will nonetheless spend hours scouring the Sunday paper for a coupon that gives them 40 percent off a tube of toothpaste "

Starting points matter

"If you asked a child to count upward from zero and another child to count downward from a million, you could be pretty sure that when they finally got exhausted, gave up, and went off in search of eggs to throw at your garage door, they would have reached very different numbers. Starting points matter because we often end up close to where we started."

Variety kills pleasure

" When they measured the volunteers’ satisfaction over the course of the study, they found that volunteers in the no-variety group were more satisfied than were volunteers in the variety group. In other words, variety made people less happy, not more. "

Price of hating

The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.
Eldridge Cleaver

The things that are not

O hateful Error, Melancholy’s child, 　　
Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men 　　
The things that are not? 　　
~ Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

The poets pen

And as imagination bodies forth 　　
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen 　　
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 　　
A local habitation and a name. 　　
Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Pleasure standard

“Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?”
~ Plato

Reading is a significant experience

"Literary reading revitalizes personal experience by revealing that what appeared so drab and dreary was in fact mysterious and extraordinary – and it provides new experience by communicating life in a way that feels as though it has actually been lived. And not only does it renew past experience, its urgent command to pay attention, like the Buddhist concept of mindfulness, makes the present incomparably richer. And reading, though solitary, does not imply a rejection of others. Again, detachment, paradoxically, brings deeper engagement. Reading increases empathy, and therefore compassion and patience, by inspiring understanding for unsympathetic and even atrocious characters. And it creates a new network of intimate friends, the writers. Finally, last but by no means least, reading is itself a significant experience."

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.”
~ John Stuart Mill

ask your heart what it doth know

　　Go to your bosom;

　　Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

　　Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Happiness is happiness

"The poet Alexander Pope devoted about a quarter of his Essay on Man to the topic of happiness, and concluded with this question: “Who thus define it, say they more or less / Than this, that happiness is happiness?"

Writing about music

"The musician Frank Zappa is reputed to have said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture "

Happiness is bitter

But, O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness 　　through another man’s eyes!
~ Shakespeare, As You Like It

Illusion of control

"Why isn’t it fun to watch a videotape of last night’s football game even when we don’t know who won? Because the fact that the game has already been played precludes the possibility that our cheering will somehow penetrate the television, travel through the cable system, find its way to the stadium, and influence the trajectory of the ball as it hurtles toward the goalposts! Perhaps the strangest thing about this illusion of control is not that it happens but that it seems to confer many of the psychological benefits of genuine control."

Workplace is the new village

"The secret of successful religions is benign paternalism. In return for surrender of freedom, the religion provides the appearance of loving care and the ability to satisfy all needs. So the corporations have become self-contained worlds with their own shops, cafés, bars, restaurants, gyms, hairdressers, massage rooms and medical facilities. The workplace is the new village, a community offering not merely employment and status but all essential services, a rich, varied social life and fun, fun, fun, fun."

The poor groaning ‘relationship’

"There is also the problem that, in contemporary cities, the couple relationship may be the only source of connection, structure, meaning and enchantment. In traditional societies there were religions to confer meaning and magic, rituals to structure the year, communities to offer strong connections and extended families to provide support. Now the poor groaning ‘relationship’ has to provide all of this, to take upon its weakened back the entire burden of living. No wonder it collapses under the strain."

Forestalling pleasure

"Forestalling pleasure is an inventive technique for getting double the juice from half the fruit."

Unresonable representations

It is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another, as it is to represent anything that really exists by that which exists not. - DANIEL DEFOE

Dysfunctional Consumer

　　I have become dysfunctional as a consumer. When I go to a mall, for example, I don’t buy things; instead, I look around me and am astonished by all the things for sale that I not only don’t need but can’t imagine myself wanting. My only entertainment at a mall is to watch the other mall-goers. Most of them, I suspect, come to the mall not because there is something specific that they need to buy. Rather, they come in the hope that doing so will trigger a desire for something that, before going to the mall, they didn’t want. It might be a desire for a cashmere sweater, a set of socket wrenches, or the latest cell phone. 　　Why go out of their way to trigger a desire? Because if they trigger one, they can enjoy the rush that comes when they extinguish that desire by buying its object. It is a rush, of course, that has as little to do with their long-term happiness as taking a hit of heroin has to do with the long-term happiness of a heroin addict.

Invisibility of death

"But now, in the city, death is invisible. There no cortèges, no notices, no mention, no ‘remains’. Years can go by without even a trace of death. It is like the flourishing city rats – always close but never mentioned, much less seen. There are no wakes – and, in secular cremation services, most of the mourners never see the corpse or coffin, much less the cremation. It is like a retirement-from-work party but without the retired employee."

You are the books you read

You are the books you read, the films you watch, the music you listen to, the
people you meet, the dreams you have, the conversations you engage in. You are
what you take from these. You are the sound of the ocean, the breath of fresh
air, the brightest light and the darkest corner.
You are a collective of every experience you have had in your life. You are every
single second of every single day. So drown yourself in a sea of knowledge and
existence. Let the words run through your veins and let the colors fill your mind
until there is nothing left to do but explode. There are no wrong answers.
Inspiration is everything. Sit back, relax, and take it all in.
Now, go out and create something.
Jac Vanek

Is there something wrong with them?

"How can this happen? Shouldn’t we know the tastes, preferences, needs, and desires of the people we will be next year—or at least later this afternoon? Shouldn’t we understand our future selves well enough to shape their lives—to find careers and lovers whom they will cherish, to buy slipcovers for the sofa that they will treasure for years to come? So why do they end up with attics and lives that are full of stuff that we considered indispensable and that they consider painful, embarrassing, or useless? Why do they criticize our choice of romantic partners, second-guess our strategies for professional advancement, and pay good money to remove the tattoos that we paid good money to get? Why do they experience regret and relief when they think about us, rather than pride and appreciation? We might understand all this if we had neglected them, ignored them, mistreated them in some fundamental way—but damn it, we gave them the best years of our lives! How can they be disappointed when we accomplish our coveted goals, and why are they so damned giddy when they end up in precisely the spot that we worked so hard to steer them clear of?
Is there something wrong with them?
Or is there something wrong with us?"

Wrong life cannot be lived rightly

“wrong life cannot be lived rightly,”

Thinker's pigeonhole

"Any “ism” invariably pigeonholes a thinker, neatly packaging him up to be sold in the market like a bar of soap."

What is education?

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
B. F. Skinner

Philosophical Novels

“A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images. But the philosophy need only spill over into the characters and action for it to stick out like a sore thumb, the plot to lose its authenticity, and the novel its life”

He has not lived long

" So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long."

You are dying prematurely

"How many have plundered your life when you were unaware of your losses; how much you have lost through groundless sorrow, foolish joy, greedy desire, the seductions of society; how little of your own was left: to you. You will realize that you are dying prematurely.' "

Will to meaning

"Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a "secondary rationalization" of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning."

How much suffering there is to get through

Rilke : "Wie viel ist aufzuleiden!" (How much suffering there is to get through!)

The wider cycles of life and death

"Long ago we had passed the stage of asking what was the meaning of life, a naive query which understands life as the attaining of some aim through the active creation of something of value. For us, the meaning of life embraced the wider cycles of life and death, of suffering and of dying."

In suffering he is unique

"When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden."