Columbia University Alumni

"Claude Shannon, the founder of information theory, invented a way to measure 'the amount of information' in a message without defining the word 'information' itself, nor even addressing the question of the meaning of the message."

"We don't know what energy is, any more than we know what information is, but as a now robust scientific concept we can describe it in precise mathematical terms, and as a commodity we can measure, market, regulate and tax it."

"If the intensity of the material world is plotted along the horizontal axis, and the response of the human mind is on the vertical, the relation between the two is represented by the logarithmic curve. Could this rule provide a clue to the relationship between the objective measure of information, and our subjective perception of it?"

"The solution of the Monty Hall problem hinges on the concept of information, and more specifically, on the relationship between added information and probability."

"Information gently but relentlessly drizzles down on us in an invisible, impalpable electric rain."

"Science has taught us that what we see and touch is not what is really there."

"The smell of subjectivity clings to the mechanical definition of complexity as stubbornly as it sticks to the definition of information."

"A genuinely political society, in which discussion and debate are an essential technique, is a society full of risks."

"Historical explanation is not identical with moral judgment."

"In Rome much pamphleteering took the form of verses and songs, circulated orally, or of libelli , defamatory placards or broadsheets (whence our word "libel")."

"What I am arguing, in effect, is that the full democratic system of the second half of the fifth century B.C. would not have been introduced had there been no Athenian empire."

"" man is by nature designed to live in the polis, the highest form of koinonia, community; that is man's end or goal if he achieves the full potentiality of his nature."

"And nothing inhibited fourth-century orators in the assembly and the law-courts from indulging in savage slander, without a touch of humour in it."

"Political leaders, lacking documents that could be kept secret (apart from the occasional exception), lacking media they could control, were of necessity brought into a direct and immediate relationship with their constituents, and therefore under more and direct and immediate control."

"The Athenians made mistakes. Which governmental system has not? The familiar game of condemning Athens for not having lived to some ideal of perfection is a stultifying approach."

"Ideal goals are a menace in themselves, as much in more modern philosophers as in Plato."

"Perhaps the best known, and certainly the most vaunted, "discovery" of modern public opinion research is the indifference and ignorance of a majority of the electorate in western democracies."

"In the western world today everyone is a democrat."

"From Aristophanes to Aristotle, the attack on the demagogues always falls back on the one central question: in whose interest does the the leader lead?"

"Faction is the greatest evil and the most common danger. "Faction" is the conventional English translation of the Greek stasis, one of the most remarkable words to be found in any language."

"We must consider not only why the classical theory of democracy appears to be in contradiction with the observed practice, but also why the many different responses to this observation, though mutually incompatible, all share the belief that democracy is the best form of political organization."

"If I had to choose one which best characterized the condition of being a political leader in Athens, the word would be "tension"."

"for it is conflict combined with consent, not consent alone, which preserves democracy from eroding into oligarchy."

"What is good for a country? What is the national interest?"

"The beauty of physics lies in the extent to which seemingly complex and unrelated phenomena can be explained and correlated through a high level of abstraction by a set of laws which are amazing in their simplicity."

"Anyone who has had actual contact with the making of the inventions that built the radio art knows that these inventions have been the product of experiment and work based on physical reasoning, rather than on the mathematicians' calculations and formulae. Precisely the opposite impression is obtained from many of our present day text books and publications."

"Men substitute words for reality and then argue about the words."

"I thought Armstrong would invent some kind of a filter to remove static from our AM radio. I didn't think he'd start a revolution—start up a whole damn new industry to compete with RCA."

"The world, I think, will wait a long time for Nikola Tesla's equal in achievement and imagination."

"Being an actor is looked at like a prolonged game of dress-up. America puts movie stars on pedestals. In college, it's the flip side. I sometimes have to justify my job to my professors because they're focused on intellect and ideas."

"The way Miramax handled it was B.S. There were a lot of crossing political agendas going on, and the reasons in the press weren't entirely true. It was like 'Are we seeing the same movie here?' I've always thought it's better to get people talking about the issue of school violence as opposed to trying to pretend it didn't happen."

"She's not your typical cheesecake pinup girl. She's beautiful and talented and has the mouth of a truck driver when necessary."

"I tend to gravitate toward the more powerful roles. As opposed to the doe-eyed girl who bats her eyelashes and runs around in towels, you now what I mean? Because that kind of makes me want to vomit.""

"I always loved how people like Jon Voight and Laurence Olivier shocked you every time they came on-screen. They were so different each time. That's what I hope to do with acting — be the chameleon and not get stuck in a type."

"I really like Shakespeare a lot. The characters that he writes for females, I think, are really great and a lot more compelling than what modern writers write, which is weird because they didn't have actresses then."

"Playing Paula in The Business of Strangers was extremely cathartic and wonderful for me because Patrick Stettner (the director) constantly encouraged me to be un-self aware. The character is very elusive and bold, but my experience of having people confuse bluntness with bitchiness has made me shy away from it, or it has made me too aware of the reactions I get from people. So Patrick undid all that by telling me to ignore what the response might be to Paula. It was almost like being a kid again, and it was a very empowering feeling."

"I definitely worry about that. I think about it all the time because that's the way Hollywood thinks. It's all about momentum and keeping your name out there, and college certainly takes you away from that. But, if I look at it in the longer term, it's so worthwhile."

"There is a thought that poverty is a public policy failure; poverty is man-made by action and non-action: poverty can be eliminated."

"(I support Mugabe) Because we have completed the process of decolonisation while Zimbabwe has not."

"I am aware that many regard me as an anti-sports character person, but the truth is that the country’s economy by then was in bad shape. Tanzania being among the highly indebted countries, I had to give sports the least prominence during my first term, while setting priorities in revitalising our economy."

"Terrorist attacks in their own countries do not generate travel advisories aimed at discouraging citizens of other countries from visiting. Why is it that only when threats of terrorist attacks are perceived in our kind of countries are travel advisories issued?"

"We have a propensity for starting and joining all kinds of organisations, the result was that we were spending more time in conferences than implementing the decisions."

"We could have waited for a banana to appear, but we believe in the spirit of cheese-development and confidence. We are not so poor that we are unable to carry out this project."

"Our reason for withdrawal is simple. We are party to too many regional trading organisations. The sum effect of this means that our membership is extremely costly to sustain and we must rationalise our participation in such ventures."

"The idea of African brotherhood is often just a cover-up for laziness. We must see what is achievable in our circumstances and evaluate all decisions. In terms of regional economic integration, sentimentality is not enough. We really have to be frank and honest."

"When a jumbo jet crashes, we will rush in with assistance, but we forget that each day 30,000 children die unnecessarily from poverty-related preventable causes - equivalent to 100 jumbo jets crashing every day."

"“When material needs are largely satisfied,” writes Carl Rogers, “as they tend to be for many people in this affluent society, individuals are turning to the psychological world, groping for a greater degree of authenticity and fulfillment.” The clear distinction between material and psychic needs is already the mystification; it capitulates to the ideology of the affluent society which affirms the material structure is sound, conceding only that some psychic and spiritual values might be lacking. Exactly this distinction sets up “authenticity” and “fulfillment” as so many more commodities for the shopper. Rather it is the fissure itself which is the source of the ills—between work and “free” time, material structure and psychological “world,” producers and consumers."

"Facilitative attitudes (and skills) can help a therapist gain entry into the group"

"There is in every organism, at whatever level, an underlying flow of movement toward constructive fulfillment of its inherent possibilities."

"Freedom from a desire to control the outcome, and respect for the capacity of the group, and skills in releasing individual expression"