68 quotes found
"The folksong collectors Bartok (Hungary) and Plicka (Czechoslovakia) notated the perceived interval deviations with a plus or minus sign (+,-). Older folksong collectors had notated all the intervals in the system of semitones, not observing the finer modifications of intervals. This first gained currency from the phongraph and tape recordings of folk music from various lands....From folksong I learned to perceive melodic intervals a little smaller or greater than those of the semitone-system....In my youth it often happened that the folk singers, who during the intermissions of dance festivals sang songs of "their kind," deviating from the semitone system, demanded that the first violinist of the Wisowitzer Kapelle play "their" melody just as they sang it. Once a tempermental singer threatened to strike the double-bass player with a beer mug if he didn't "play along" with the song, exactly as he sang it."
"Every time I fire a linguist, the performance of our speech recognition system goes up."
"It is generally believed that scientific talent reveals itself in early youth. [...] This was certainly not my case. I somehow slid into my scientific profession. My mother wished for me to become a physician, just like my father. [...] I myself wanted to be a lawyer, defender of the unjustly accused. But my career is the result of political circumstances, academic possibilities, and lucky accidents."
"It's easier to say something stupid than write something stupid."
"He was not a pioneer of speech recognition, he was the pioneer of speech recognition."
"The way forward does not lie in amateur and comically timeless linguistic sociology which takes ‘forms of life’ for granted (and this is what philosophy has been recently), but in the systematic study of forms of life which does not take them for granted at all. It hardly matters whether such an inquiry is called philosophy or sociology."
"(J. L. Austin's) admirers claim that his supreme preoccupation was truth. His work, with its sad conjunction of extraordinary cunning in presentation with very thin content, leaves rather the impression of a man who had little sense of real problems but who liked winning arguments and dominating people in the course of them, and who was well equipped to gratify his taste. He was the supreme dialectical poker player, unsurpassed at making people believe that their bluff had been called when in fact they weren’t bluffing, and at stone-walling any attempt to call his own. It would be hypocritical not to say all this. Hypocrisy might not matter, but it would also be unfair to those students who are still conned into supposing that this kind of philosophizing has much in common with serious intellecual endeavour."
"Just as every girl should have a husband, preferably her own, so every culture must have its state, preferably its own."
"Dr J. O. Wisdom once observed to me that he knew people who thought there was no philosophy after Hegel, and others who thought there was none before Wittgenstein; and he saw no reason for excluding the possibility that both were right."
"Wittgenstein's appeal lies in the fact that he provides a strange kind of vindication of romanticism, of conceptual Gemeinschaft, of custom-based concepts rather than statute-seeking Reform, and that he does so through a very general theory of meaning, rather than from the premisses habitually used for this purpose. Because there is no unique formal notation valid for all speech, each and every culture is vindicated. One never knew that could be done — and so quickly too! It is that above all which endows his philosophy with such a capacity to attract and to repel. His mystique of consensual custom denies that anything can sit in judgment of our concepts, that some may be more rational and others less so. So all of them are in order and have nothing to fear from philosophy, as indeed he insists. This is a fairly mild form of irrationalism, invoking no fierce dark Gods, merely a consensual community. It is the Soft Porn of Irrationalism."
"When knowledge is the slave of social considerations, it defines a special class; when it serves its own ends only, it no longer does so. There is of course a profound logic in this paradox: genuine knowledge is egalitarian in that it allows no privileged source, testers, messengers of Truth. It tolerates no privileged and circumscribed data. The autonomy of knowledge is a leveller."
"It is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way round."
"[I am a humble adherent of]...Enlightenment Rationalist Fundamentalism."
"Knowledge which ... transcends the bounds, the prejudices and prejudgements of any one society and culture is not an illusion but, on the contrary, a glorious and luminous reality. Just how it was achieved remains subject to debate."
"It is this which explains nationalism: the principle — so strange and eccentric in the age of agrarian cultural diversity and the 'ethnic' division of labour — that homogeneity of culture is the political bond, that mastery of (and, one should add, acceptability in) a given high culture ... is the precondition of political, economic and social citizenship."
"I am deeply sensitive to the spell of nationalism. I can play about thirty Bohemian folk songs ... on my mouth-organ. My oldest friend, who is Czech and a patriot, cannot bear to hear me play them because he says I do it in such a schmalzy way, 'crying into the mouth organ'. I do not think I could have written the book on nationalism which I did write, were I not capable of crying, with the help of a little alcohol, over folk songs, which happen to be my favourite form of music."
"Primitive man has lived twice: once in and for himself, and the second time for us, in our reconstruction."
"There is a story about German students who were told by their Professor of Philosophy that they, the students, had a real existence, and who went wild with joy on being given this information. Ethnomethodology also teaches us that our daily lived world and experience are real, and we can and do rejoice in this."
"A cleric who loses his faith abandons his calling; a philosopher who loses his redefines his subject."
"Ideas, and even the detection of errors, require more than care and caution."
"The idea that some of the members of the smooth, bland variety of second generation of linguistic philosophers undergo ”perplexity”, let alone intellectual cramp, has an element of high comedy."
"Philosophy is explicitness, generality, orientation and assessment. That which one would insinuate, thereof one must speak."
"The new perspective also manifested itself in other ways: the shift of attention to sociologists such as Max Weber who were primarily concerned, not with overall 'development', but with the one specific development, that of modern society; the tendency to be concerned with those aspects of Marxism relevant to this one transition, and to ignore its Evolutionist aspects; and, recently and most characteristically, the concern with the notion of industrial society, and its antithesis, to the detriment of other classifications, oppositions and alternatives."
"In the twentieth century, the essence of man is not that he is a rational, or a political, or a sinful, or a thinking animal, but that he is an industrial animal. It is not his moral or intellectual or social or aesthetic ... attributes which make man what he is. His essence resides in his capacity to contribute to, and to profit from, industrial society. The emergence of industiral society is the prime concern of sociology."
"The model that can be drawn up, of a plural society in which the multiplicity of forces and institutions prevent any one of their number dominating the rest, and which function on the basis of a broad and non-doctrinaire consensus — this picture does not warm the blood like wine. To appreciate and savour its appeal, one needs a rather sophisticated taste, perhaps."
"Looking at the contemporary world, two things are obvious: democracy is doing rather badly, and democracy is doing very well. New states are born free, yet everywhere they are in chains. Democracy is doing very badly in that democratic institutions have fallen by the wayside in very many of the newly independent 'transitional' societies, and they are precarious elsewhere. Democracy, on the other hand, is doing extremely well in so far as it is almost (though not quite) universally accepted as a valid norm."
"People are even more reluctant to admit that man explains nothing, than they were to admit that God explains nothing."
"What are the motives of those who wish to endorse all cultures? A part of their motive is, no doubt, a kind of universal benevolence — let a hundred flowers bloom, let all cultures enjoy their own life and their own values. This kind of liberalism on behalf of cultural wholes faces the same difficulty as liberalism on behalf of individuals (but it does not even attempt to face it) — is it to be freedom for the pikes or the minnows? Many traditional cultures are exclusive and intolerant, and oppress subcultures within their own territory. Who exactly is to be granted this protected status?"
"In practice, those who espouse this universal cultural tolerance are indeed inevitably selective; what they mean is nice, cosy, traditional cultures, not as they exist, but as they are pictured in the romantic imagination. And above all, they are interested in selective preservation within their own society. Not surprisingly, they dislike scientism, positivism, rationalism in their own society, and rather ignore the fact that these traits also constitute a culture, and one which, from the viewpoint of their initial and rather abstract starting point, has at least as good a claim as the cosiest of closed societies."
"In brief, nationalism is a theory of political legitimacy, which requires the ethnic boundaries should not be cut across political ones, and, in particular, that ethnic boundaries within a given state — a contingency already formally excluded by the principle in its general formulation — should not separate the power holders from the rest."
"Tribalism never prospers, for when it does, everyone will respect it as a true nationalism, and no-one will dare call it tribalism."
"Capital, like capitalism, seems an overrated category."
"Obstruction of mobility, where it occurs, is one of the most serious and intractable problems of industrial society."
"This is Disenchantment: the Faustian purchase of cognitive, technological and administrative power, by the surrender of our previous meaningful, humanly suffused, humanly responsive, if often also menacing or capricious world."
"Civil Society is a cluster of institutions and associations strong enough to prevent tyranny, but which are, none the less, entered and left freely, rather than imposed by birth or sustained by awesome ritual. You can join the Labour Party without slaughtering a sheep ..."
"This is indeed one of the most important general traits of a modern society: cultural homogeneity, the capacity for context-free communication, the standardization of expression and comprehension."
"I do not recommend any legislative action against hermeneutics. I am a liberal person opposed to all unnecessary state limitation of individual liberties. Hermeneutics between consenting adults should not, in my view, be the object of any statutory restrictions. I know, only too well, what it would entail. Hermeneutic speakeasies would spring up all over the place, smuggled Thick Descriptions would be brought in by the lorry-load from Canada by the Mafia, blood and thick meaning would clot in the gutter as rival gangs of semiotic bootleggers slugged it out in a series of bloody shoot-outs and ambushes. Addicts would be subject to blackmail. Consumption of deep meanings and its attendant psychic consequences would in no way diminsh, but the criminal world would benefit, and the whole fabric of civil society would be put under severe strain. Never!"
"America was born modern; it did not have to achieve modernity, nor did it have modernity thrust upon it."
"Whereas Weber was so bewitched by the spell of nationalism that he was never able to theorize it, Gellner has theorized nationalism without detecting the spell."
"The state is the dominant political form in the world today, and nationalism remains a powerful political force. This book will help you understand where it came from and why it endures."
"Gellner was a polymath, whose training had been in philosophy, and the peculiarity of his contribution to anthropology lies in this fact : he theorized at a deep philosophical level with remarkable acuity what was involved in the practice of the discipline. The arguments he made are highly distinctive because they suggest that mainstream anthropological self-understanding is not correct. He is a powerful, indeed almost scandalous figure. Differently put, he was not and is not an accepted insider within anthropology."
"I call God to witness that all I have written and preached, has been to rescue souls from sin. There can be no turning back. My Lord walked the path of truth and duty, even though it took Him to Calvary. Can I, one of his humble followers, turn back now? To witness to God's truth is more important than life. Joyfully then, will I confirm with my blood all the writings and preachings of truths that I've held. Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit.*"
"God is my witness that I have never taught or preached that which false witnesses have testified against me. He knows that the great object of all my preaching and writing was to convert men from sin. In the truth of that gospel which hitherto I have written, taught and preached, I now joyfully die."
"Melius est bene mori, quam male vivere (...) qui mortem metuit, amittit gaudia vitae; super omnia vincit veritas, vincit, qui occiditur, quia nulla ei nocet adversitas, si nulla ei dominatur iniquitas."
"O sancta simplicitas!"
"The people from Prague and other Czechs should be whipped who speak half Czech and half German (...) And who could enumerate how the Czech language has already been corrupted, so that the true Czech hears they speak, but he does not understand them. And from that arises envy, anger, conflict, strife and Czech humiliation."
"It is impossible that Christendom finds its peace in God's will, if the priesthood is not being called to order."
"Even a most evil man is better than the devil!"
"If I knew a foreigner from anywhere in his virtue who would love God and would be interested in the good more than my own brother, he would be dearer to me than my brother. And hence I prefer good English priests over timid Czech priests and good German over an evil brother."
"The only law that a Christian should listen to and read is the law of God's Commandments. And it is not right to comply with, implement or observe any other law."
"Why, for instance, did Martin Luther succeed, whereas other important rebels against the medieval church — like John Huss — fail? Well, Luther was successful because printing had been developed by the time he advanced his cause. So his good earthy writings were put into pamphlets and spread so far and wide that the church officials couldn't have stopped the Protestant Reformation even if they had burned Luther at the stake."
"I am now satisfied that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States."
"In the negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music. They are pathetic, tender, passionate, melancholy, solemn, religious, bold, merry, gay or what you will. It is music that suits itself to any mood or any purpose. There is nothing in the whole age of composition that cannot be supplied with themes from this source."
"It cannot be emphasized too strongly that art, as such, does not "pay," to use an American expression – at least, not in the beginning – and that the art that has to pay its own way is apt to become vitiated and cheap."
"The music of the people is like a rare and lovely flower growing amidst encroaching weeds. Thousands pass it, while others trample it under foot, and thus the chances are that it will perish before it is seen by the one discriminating spirit who will prize it above all else. The fact that no one has as yet arisen to make the most of it does not prove that nothing is there."
"The Americans expect great things of me... If the small Czech nation can have such musicians, they say, why could not they, too, when their country and people is so immense."
"There can be no doubt that Tsai's phenomena (whether they be works of art in the strict sense, or whether they be fantastic artifices) are extremely important. They show what promises and dangers may be in here in a "play," if it is proposed by a great artist. Because, even if Tsai's phenomena be considered artifices, there can be no doubt that Tsai is a great artist. Not because what he does is pleasant, or because he proposes a play, or because he represents the spirit of our times, but because he reveals to us, through artifice or works of art, the concrete experience of a future full of promise or abysmal danger."
"The photographer’s gesture as the search for a viewpoint onto a scene takes place within the possibilities offered by the apparatus. The photographer moves within specific categories of space and time regarding the scene: proximity and distance, bird- and worm’s-eye views, frontal- and side-views, short or long exposures, etc. The Gestalt of space–time surrounding the scene is prefigured for the photographer by the categories of his camera. These categories are an a priori for him. He must ‘decide’ within them: he must press the trigger."
"The tame, the domesticated, try to monopolize the word freedom; they'd like to apply it to their own condition. They apply the word "wild" to the free."
"[I]t redounds to the honour of Russian literature that the leading spirits of that literature were the most efficient adversaries of slavery."
"Theology is to-day recognised to be the instrument of myth, philosophy to be the instrument of science."
"A great many people really care very little for their own compatriots, but they hate anything foreign."
"Unquestionably society ought to be so organised as to render self-sacrifice superfluous, for as long as men exist who are ready and willing to make sacrifices, so long will egoists take advantage of these sacrifices."
"Jesus, not Cæsar, I repeat,—this is the meaning of our history and democracy."
"War is not the greatest evil, though it is an evil. The open struggle of the battlefield is not the greatest evil; worse is that chronic condition of society which makes possible the violence of the stronger to the weaker; worse than war are insincerity and falsehood; worse is that egotism hidden under the mask of humanity and nobility in mind; worse is cowardice passing itself off as fortitude; worse is sophistry deceiving the sensible and wise. Death is not worse than a dishonourable life which destroys its own soul as well as that of its neighbour."
"The political significance of Indonesian Islam, including Javanese Islam, stems in no small measure from the fact that in Islam the borderline between religion and politics is, at best very thin. Islam is a way of life as much as a religion…. Islam does not recognize the existence of independent, secular realms of life…. Separation of religion and politics, in other words, was, at best a temporary phenomenon of Islam in decline. In an era of Islamic awakening, it could not survive for long, either in independent Muslim lands or in Islamic areas ruled by non-Muslims…."
"Like other Muslims, Indonesian Islamic leaders—reformists, hardly less than orthodox—were thus by Western standards not only lacking in political experience, but were, by the nature of their orientation and training, ill-equipped to formulate political goals as such. The santri {Javanese practitioners of a more orthodox Islam} civilization, in other words, is not a political ideal so much as the idealization of a religious community—the ummah—which would subsume within its all-embracing confines all walks of life, subordinating the state to the dictates of the Islamic ethic…. If given political expression in Darul Islam—the so-called “Islamic State”—the political program of Islam is limited to postulating a state which, irrespective of its constitutional form, economic organization, and social composition, is to be ruled by Muslims in accordance with Islamic Law."
"The Indo-European homeland has to be localized at the area where the wild horse did not live."