Give me a stock clerk with a goal, and I’ll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals, and I’ll give you a stock clerk.
“While you were watching the commercials, China advanced a few hundred years.”
“China doesn’t have a party culture. Five thousand years of history, and we’ve never partied before.” (Regarding the 2008 Olympic opening ceremonies)
Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different.
Book: The Portrait of Dorian Gray
That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended—civilizations are built up—excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top, and then it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down.
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts.
Some say, “those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.” I say, “those who ignore history…are in for BIG surprise.”
TV: The Colbert Réport: 22 Feb 2006
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dansmind86 /
catholicism, civilization, history, information, religion, sociology
#1944
I dont know about philosophy of Mayans, we have very little information due to the efficiency of the spanish conquistadores, and uh, well mostly their priests, who burned all the books. They had hundreds of thousands of books, and there’s three left, and one of them has these venus calculations… just imagine our civilization reduced to three books.
Speech: from a 1979 lecture in New Zealand
The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another.
If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.
The past is a foriegn country, it speaks its own language, so you have to translate.
TV: CSPANN
It is not how much you know about life but how you live your life that counts. Those who can avoid mistakes by observing the mistakes of others are most apt to keep free from sorrow. In a world full of uncertainties, the record of what has gone before—human experience—is as sure and reliable as anything of which we know.
We are sometimes told that only fanaticism can make a social group effective. I think this is totally contrary to the lessons of history. But, in any case, only those who slavishly worship success can think that effectiveness is admirable without regard to what is effected. For my part, I think it better to do a little good than to do much harm. The world that I should wish to see would be one freed from the virulence of group hostilities and capable of realizing that happiness for all is to be derived rather from co-operation than from strife. I should wish to see a world in which education aimed at mental freedom rather than at imprisoning the minds of the young in a rigid armor of dogma calculated to protect them through life against the shafts of impartial evidence. The world needs open hearts and open minds, and it is not through rigid systems, whether old or new, that these can be derived.
Book: “Why I Am Not a Christian, and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, 1957 (p. vii)
Apart from logical cogency, there is to me something a little odd about the ethical valuations of those who think that an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent Deity, after preparing the ground by many millions of years of lifeless nebulae, would consider Himself adequately rewarded by the final emergence of Hitler and Stalin and the H-Bomb.
Book: “Why I Am Not a Christian, and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, 1957 (p. vi)
History is a simple piece of paper covered with print. The main thing is still to make history, not to write it.
* In fact it’s the view of the more thoughtful historians, particularly those who have spent time in the same bar as the theoretical physicists, that the entirety of human history can be considered as a sort of blooper reel. All those wars, all those famines caused by malign stupidity, all that determined, mindless repetition of the same old errors, are in the great cosmic scheme of things only equivalent to Mr Spock’s ears falling off.
Book: The Last Continent
Joy has no parents. No joy ever
learns from the one before, and it dies without heirs.
But sorrow has a long tradition,
handed down from eye to eye, from heart to heart.
learns from the one before, and it dies without heirs.
But sorrow has a long tradition,
handed down from eye to eye, from heart to heart.
Poem: You Can Rely On Him
In every age “the good old days” were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.
Death walked up to a table that had been laid for dinner, and gripped a corner of the tablecloth.
TIME IS THE CLOTH, he said. THE CUTLERY AND PLATES ARE THE EVENTS THAT TAKE PLACE WITHIN TIME–
There was a drum roll. Susan glanced down. The Death of Rats was seated in front of a tiny drum kit.
OBSERVE.
Death pulled the cloth away. There was a rattle of cutlery and a moment of uncertainty regarding a vase of flowers, but almost all the tableware remained in place.
‘I see,’ said Susan.
THE TABLE REMAINS LAID, BUT THE CLOTH CAN NOW BE USED FOR ANOTHER MEAL.
‘However, you knocked the salt over,’ said Susan.
THE TECHNIQUE IS NOT PERFECT.
‘And there are stains on the cloth from the previous meal, Grandfather.’
Death beamed. YES, he said. AS METAPHORS GO IT IS RATHER GOOD, DON’T YOU THINK?
‘People would notice!’
REALLY? HUMANS ARE THE MOST UNOBSERVANT CREATURES IN THE UNIVERSE. OH, THERE ARE LOTS OF ANOMALIES, OF COURSE, A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF SPILLED SALT, BUT HISTORIANS EXPLAIN THEM AWAY. THEY ARE SO VERY USEFUL IN THAT RESPECT.
TIME IS THE CLOTH, he said. THE CUTLERY AND PLATES ARE THE EVENTS THAT TAKE PLACE WITHIN TIME–
There was a drum roll. Susan glanced down. The Death of Rats was seated in front of a tiny drum kit.
OBSERVE.
Death pulled the cloth away. There was a rattle of cutlery and a moment of uncertainty regarding a vase of flowers, but almost all the tableware remained in place.
‘I see,’ said Susan.
THE TABLE REMAINS LAID, BUT THE CLOTH CAN NOW BE USED FOR ANOTHER MEAL.
‘However, you knocked the salt over,’ said Susan.
THE TECHNIQUE IS NOT PERFECT.
‘And there are stains on the cloth from the previous meal, Grandfather.’
Death beamed. YES, he said. AS METAPHORS GO IT IS RATHER GOOD, DON’T YOU THINK?
‘People would notice!’
REALLY? HUMANS ARE THE MOST UNOBSERVANT CREATURES IN THE UNIVERSE. OH, THERE ARE LOTS OF ANOMALIES, OF COURSE, A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF SPILLED SALT, BUT HISTORIANS EXPLAIN THEM AWAY. THEY ARE SO VERY USEFUL IN THAT RESPECT.
Book: Thief of Time