Themes

"Randomness is a very, very subtle concept with its study properly belonging to statisticians more than mathematicians."

"Perhaps randomness is not merely an adequate description for complex causes that we cannot specify. Perhaps the world really works this way, and many events are uncaused in any conventional sense of the word."

"Events may appear to us to be random, but this could be attributed to human ignorance about the details of the processes involved."

"The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old one'. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."

"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."

"He who believes this (atomism) may as well believe that if a great quantity of the one-and-twenty letters, composed either of gold or any other matter, were thrown upon the ground, they would fall into such order as legibly to form the Annals of Ennius. I doubt whether fortune could make a single verse of them."

"How dare we speak of the laws of chance? Is not chance the antithesis of all law?"

"There is no task of greater importance than to give our children the very best preparation for the demands of an ominous future, a preparation that aims at the methodical cultivation of their spiritual and their moral gifts. As long as the exemplary work of the Waldorf School Movement continues to spread its influence as it has done over the past decades, we can all look forward with hope. I am sure that Rudolf Steiner's work for children must be considered a central contribution to the twentieth century and I feel it deserves the support of all freedom-loving thinking people"

"My past three decades (of teaching) have been marked by change. From time to time a unique stabilizing influence would appear in my classes: a Waldorf graduate. They were different from the others. Without exception they were, at the same time, caring people, creative students, individuals with indefinable values, and students who when they spoke made a difference."

"My own experience with Waldorf-educated children is overwhelmingly positive. Although a public school teacher myself for 30 years, I've been fortunate enough as a public speaker on school reform to have been invited to lecture at Waldorf schools all over the country. What I've seen on these trips has been a revelation to me of what might be possible."

"Those in the public school reform movement have some important things to learn from what Waldorf educators have been doing for many years. It is an enormously impressive effort toward quality education, and schools would be advised to familiarize themselves with the basic assumptions that under gird the Waldorf movement. Art as it helps to reveal the use of language, art as it can be revealed in numbers, and certainly in nature"

"The advent of the Waldorf Schools was in my opinion the greatest contribution to world peace and understanding of the century."

"Waldorf education places the development of the individual child in the focal point, convinced that the healthy individual is a prerequisite for a healthy society."

"Waldorf education enables young people to be in love with the world as the world should be loved."

"Waldorf schools generally turn out young people who get into the colleges of their choice, but more importantly are well prepared for life. I hope this form of education becomes the basis for public school curriculum throughout the United States. And I hope it happens soon."

"Steiner was a free-spirited school that encouraged creativity and individualism."

"Waldorf education has been an important model of holistic education for almost a century. It is one of the very few forms of education that acknowledges the soul-life of children and nurtures that life. It is truly an education for the whole child and will continue to be an important model of education as we move into the 21st century."

"I am deeply grateful for Waldorf education, which woke me up and helped me rediscover my imagination."

"I used to think Waldorf education the most undamaging education, but then the more I looked into it, I found it the most beneficial system we have. People ask, "What will happen to my child in the world if he doesn't learn to read and write very early?" . . . The issue is that the child's greatest strength for survival in a world of madness is to be whole, sane and in touch with the heart. The beauty of the Waldorf School is that it keeps children intact until they are ready to move out into the world as whole individuals."

"I first heard of Waldorf education about five years ago, after having carried out extensive study of the neurological aspects of cognition, movement, and maturation. I was delighted to discover such a neurologically sound curriculum. I heartily support efforts to spread the awareness of Waldorf education and hope that it will spawn not only an increase in Waldorf schools, but an infusion of at least some of the ideas into the mainstream where they are so sorely needed. In Colorado, I am working with several districts to incorporate various Waldorf strategies into the teaching of reading and mathematics. The ideas are very well received and very much needed."

"From a single crime know the nation."

"You can construct a nation on an idea; but you cannot reconstruct a nation on the basis of one."

"We shall have to learn again to be one nation, or one day we shall be no nation."

"No nation can plan its future without coming to terms with its past."

"This is the vanity of every principality—and notable for a nation—that the principality is sovereign in history; which is to say, that it presumes it is the power in relation to which the moral significance of everything and everyone else is determined."

"Humanity without Nationality is empty, nationality without humanity is blind."

"The disappearance of whole nations would impoverish us no less than if all the people were to become identical, with the same character and the same face. Nations are the wealth of humanity, its generalized personalities. The least among them has its own special colors, and harbors within itself a special aspect of God's design."

"What do we call a nation? – People who are of the same origin and who speak the same words and who live and make friends of each other, who have the same customs and songs and entertainment are what we call a nation, and the place where that people lives is called the people's country."

"No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation; no man has a right to say to his country - thus far shalt thou go and no further."

"I know three things must always be To keep a nation strong and free. One is a hearthstone bright and dear, With busy, happy loved ones near. One is a ready heart and hand To love, and serve, and keep the land. is a worn and beaten way where the people go to pray. long as these are kept alive, Nation and people will survive. God keep them always, everywhere— The home, the heart, the place of prayer."

"Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage."

"What defines a people is not race, not tradition, not geography, but the free choice of a group of human beings to live together as fellow citizens."

"A nation that can not preserve itself ought to die, and it will die—die in the grasp of the evils it is too feeble to overthrow."

"Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last."

"Complete equality of rights for all nations; the right of nations to self-determination; the unity of the workers of all nations—such is the national program that Marxism, the experience of the whole world, and the experience of Russia, teach the workers."

"Cleanse the body of this nation Through the glory of the Lord."

"Not gold but only men can make A people great and strong; Men who for truth and honor's sake Stand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep, Who dare while others fly— They build a nation's pillars deep And lift them to the sky."

"Many of the countries that achieved formal sovereignty through decolonization in the post-World War II period emerged as extremely weak States. That is, they emerged with a level of institutional capacity-of "infrastructural power," in Michael Mann's useful conceptualization-well below the minimum level one usually associates with the notion of "sovereign State." Looking at the phenomenon from the perspective of the international system, Robert Jackson has suggested that decolonization brought with it an unprecedented disjunction between "negative" and "positive" sovereignty-that is, between sovereignty in the traditional sense and empirical Statehood, producing "quasi-States." Whereas in the past, States gained sovereignty only if they mustered the internal capacity to withstand the challenges of other States at the international level, in the contemporary world the situation is partially reversed, in that some of the new States are able to maintain their sovereignty only with the support of the international system. While decolonization has certainly resulted in the proliferation of "weak States," Jackson exaggerates the newness of the phenomenon; indeed he himself acknowledges that the "new sovereignty game" originated under the League of Nations, when the application of the principle of national self-determination produced a plethora of countries in the Balkans and northern Europe whose capacity for "empirical" Statehood was open to question. In any case, it is quite evident that the resumption of imperial disintegration within eastern Europe following the collapse of Communism is producing additional "quasi-States." Weak States are prone to protracted internal conflicts, and due to the widespread availability of cheap, rapid-fire weapons, such conflicts are likely to involve high levels of violence."

"In those days ten men out of all the languages of the nations will take hold, yes, they will take firm hold of the robe of a Jew, saying: “We want to go with you, for we have heard that God is with you people."

"No nation is fit to sit in judgement upon any other nation."

"A nation is created by families, a religion, traditions: it is made up out of the hearts of mothers, the wisdom of fathers, the joy and the exuberance of children."

"Roger Smith: A negotiator only uses force as a last resort."

"A riot is at the bottom the language of the unheard."

"A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit upon it."

"It seems safe to look forward to the time when the conception of attractive and repulsive forces, having served its purpose as a useful piece of scientific scaffolding, will be replaced by the deduction of the phenomena known as attraction and repulsion, from the general laws of motion."

"Newton expressly repudiated the notion of the existence of attractive forces, in the sense in which that term is ordinarily understood; and he refused to put forward any hypothesis as to the physical cause of the so-called 'attraction of gravitation.'"

"To all appearance, the phenomena exhibited by the pendulum are not to be accounted for by impact: in fact, it is usually assumed that corresponding phenomena would take place if the earth and the pendulum were situated in an absolute vacuum, and at any conceivable distance from one another. If this be so, it follows that there must be two totally different kinds of causes of motion: the one impact—a vera causa [true cause], of which, to all appearance, we have constant experience; the other, attractive or repulsive 'force'—a metaphysical entity which is physically inconceivable."

"The laws of motion of visible and tangible, or molar, matter had been worked out to a great degree of refinement and embodied in the branches of science known as Mechanics, Hydrostatics, and Pneumatics. These laws had been shown to hold good... throughout the universe on the assumption that all such masses of matter possessed inertia and were susceptible of acquiring motion, in two ways, firstly by impact, or impulse from without; and, secondly, by the operation of certain hypothetical causes of motion termed 'forces,' which were usually supposed to be resident in the particles of the masses themselves, and to operate at a distance, in such a way as to tend to draw any two such masses together, or to separate them more widely."

"Vis consili expers mole ruit sua."

"Why are human beings so obsequious, ready to kill and ready to die at the call of kings and chieftains? Perhaps it is because they worship might, venerate those who command might, and are convinced that it is by force that man prevails. The splendor and the pride of kings blind the people."