Week 2023-25: Isaac Asimov - Collected Quotes

"Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young." (Isaac Asimov, "Pebble in the Sky", 1950)

"The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists." (Isaac Asimov, "The Gods Themselves", 1972)

"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is. The only function of a school is to make self-education easier; failing that, it does nothing." (Isaac Asimov, "Science Past, Science Future", 1975)

"People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be." (Isaac Asimov, "The Planet That Wasn't", 1976)

"At odd and unpredictable times, we cling in fright to the past." (Isaac Asimov, "Foundation's Edge", 1982)

"The greatest weapons in the conquest of knowledge are an understanding mind and the inexorable curiosity that drives it on." (Isaac Asimov, "Asimov's New Guide to Science", 1984)

"If we only obey those rules that we think are just and reasonable, then no rule will stand, for there is no rule that some will not think is unjust and unreasonable." (Isaac Asimov, "Foundation and Earth", 1986)

"A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value." (Isaac Asimov, "Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations", 1988)

"Any increase in knowledge anywhere helps pave the way for an increase in knowledge everywhere." (Isaac Asimov, "Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations", 1988)

"There is very little flexibility in the behavior of the Universe. What it does once, it does again." (Isaac Asimov, "Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations", 1988)

"What makes it so hard to organize the environment sensibly is that everything we touch is hooked up to everything else." (Isaac Asimov, "Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations", 1988)

Week 2023-24: Philip K Dick - Collected Quotes

"Can any of us fix anything? No. None of us can do that. We're specialized. Each one of us has his own line, his own work. I understand my work, you understand yours. The tendency in evolution is toward greater and greater specialization. Man's society is an ecology that forces adaptation to it. Continued complexity makes it impossible for us to know anything outside our own personal field - I can't follow the work of the man sitting at the next desk over from me. Too much knowledge has piled up in each field. And there are too many fields." (Philip K. Dick, The Variable Man", 1952)

"[…] anybody with a genuine system of prediction would be using it, not selling it." (Philip K Dick, "Solar Lottery", 1955) 

"It’s the highest goal of man - the need to grow and advance [...] to find new things [...] to expand. To spread out, reach areas, experiences, comprehend and live in an evolving fashion. To push aside routine and repetition, to break out of mindless monotony and thrust forward. To keep moving on [...]" (Philip K Dick, "Solar Lottery", 1955)

"These machines had become old and worn-out, had begun making mistakes; therefore they began to seem almost human." (Philip K Dick & Ray Nelson, "The Ganymede Takeover", 1967)

"A humanoid robot is like any other machine; it can fluctuate between being a benefit and a hazard very rapidly." (Philip K Dick, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", 1968)

"To the paranoid, nothing is a surprise; everything happens exactly as he expected, and sometimes even more so. It all fits into his system. For us, though, there can be no system; maybe all systems - that is, any theoretical, verbal, symbolic, semantic, etc. formulation that attempts to act as an all-encompassing, all-explaining hypothesis of what the universe is about - are manifestations of paranoia. We should be content with the mysterious, the meaningless, the contradictory, the hostile, and most of all the unexplainably warm and giving." (Philip K Dick, "The Android and the Human", [speech] 1972)

"Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, it doesn’t go away." (Philip K Dick, "Valis", 1981)

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." (Philip K. Dick)

"The problem with introspection is that it has no end." (Philip K. Dick)

"The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give." (Philip K. Dick)

Week 2023-23: Mind is...

"Mind is the limit and measure of all things [...]" (Nicolas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "Idiota de mente" ["The Layman: About Mind"], 1450)

"You know how the divine Simplicity enfolds all things. Mind is the image of this enfolding Simplicity." (Nicolas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "Idiota de mente: The Layman: About Mind", 1450)

"Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth." (Desiderius Erasmus, "Praise of Folly", 1509)

"The mind is so constituted that it does not willingly rest in facts and immediate causes, but seeks always after a knowledge of the remoter links in the chain of causation." (Thomas H Huxley, "Discourses Biological and Geological", 1894)

"A truthful mind is necessary for the discovery of truth in Nature." (Sir Richard A Gregory, "Discovery; or, The Spirit and Service of Science", 1916)

"Mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience; all else is remote inference." (Arthur Eddington, "Science and the Unseen World", 1929)

The truly scientific mind is altogether unafraid of the new [...]" (Wilfred Trotter, "Observation and Experiment and Their Use in the Medical Sciences", British Medical Journal Vol. 2, 1930)

"Most mistakes in philosophy and logic occur because the human mind is apt to take the symbol for the reality." (Albert Einstein, "Cosmic Religion: With Other Opinions and Aphorisms", 1931)

"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend." (Robertson Davies, "Tempest-Tost", 1951)

"We are part of nature, and our mind is the only instrument we have, or can conceive of, for learning about nature or about ourselves." (Conrad H Waddington, "The Nature of Life", 1960)

"The mind is defined as the sum total of all the programs and the metaprograms of a given human computer, whether or not they are immediately elicitable, detectable, and visibly operational to the self or to others." (John C Lilly "Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer" 2nd Ed., 1972)

"The human mind is constantly drawn to anything that embodies some aspect of symmetry." (Marcus du Sautoy, "Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature", 2008)

"The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe." (Albert Einstein)

Week 2023-22: Nicolas of Cusa - Collected Quotes

"All we know of the truth is that the absolute truth, such as it is, is beyond our reach." 

(Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "De Docta Ignorantia" ["On Learned Ignorance"], 1440)

"Wisdom is not to be found in the art of oratory, or in great books, but in a withdrawal from these sensible things and in a turning to the most simple and infinite forms. You will learn how to receive it into a temple purged from all vice, and by fervent love to cling to it until you may taste it and see how sweet That is which is all sweetness. Once this has been tasted, all things which you now consider as important will appear as vile, and you will be so humbled that no arrogance or other vice will remain in you. Once having tasted this wisdom, you will inseparably adhere to it with a chaste and pure heart. You will choose rather to forsake this world and all else that is not of this wisdom, and living with unspeakable happiness you will die." (Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "De Docta Ignorantia" ["On Learned Ignorance"], 1440)

"Now discourse is necessarily limited by its point of departure and its point of arrival, and since these are in mutual opposition we speak of contradiction. For the discursive reason these terms are opposed and distinct. In the realm of the reason, therefore, there is a necessary disjunction between extremes, as, for example, in the rational definition of the circle where the lines from the center to the circumference are equal and where the center cannot coincide with the circumference." (Nicholas of Cusa, "Apologia Doctae ignorantiae" ["The Defense of Learned Ignorance"], 1449)

"Mind is the limit and measure of all things [...]" (Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "Idiota de mente: The Layman: About Mind", 1450)

"You know how the divine Simplicity enfolds all things. Mind is the image of this enfolding Simplicity. If, then, you called this divine Simplicity infinite Mind, it will be the exemplar of our mind. If you called the divine mind the totality of the truth of things, you will call our mind the totality of the assimilation of things, so that it may be a totality of ideas. In the divine Mind conception is the production of things; in our mind conception is the knowledge of things. If the divine Mind is absolute Being, then its conception is the creation of beings; and conception in the human mind is the assimilation of beings." (Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "Idiota de mente: The Layman: About Mind", 1450)

"[…] a great multitude cannot exist without much diversity […]" (Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "De Pace Fidei" ["The Peace of Faith"], 1453)

"All men strive and hope for nothing other than eternal life in their human nature. For this they instituted purgations of souls and sacred rites, in order to be better adapted in their nature to that eternal life." (Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "De Pace Fidei" ["The Peace of Faith"], 1453)

"There can only be one wisdom. For if it were possible that there be several wisdoms, then these would have to be from one. Namely, unity is prior to all plurality." (Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "De Pace Fidei" ["The Peace of Faith"], 1453)

"Within itself the soul sees all things more truly than as they exist in different things outside itself. And the more it goes out unto other things in order to know them, the more it enters into itself in order to know itself." (Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "On Equality", 1459)

"If full knowledge about the very base of our existence could be described as a circle, the best we can do is to arrive at a polygon." (Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus])

"The universe has no circumference, for if it had a center and a circumference there would be some and some thing beyond the world, suppositions which are wholly lacking in truth. Since, therefore, it is impossible that the universe should be enclosed within a corporeal center and corporeal boundary, it is not within our power to understand the universe, whose center and circumference are God. And though the universe." (Nicholas of Cusa[Nicolaus Cusanus])

"Time is to eternity as an image is to its exemplar, and those things which are temporal bear a resemblance to those things which are eternal." (Nicholas of Cusa[Nicolaus Cusanus])