Authors From The United States

"The man who was my host looked at me and smiled, then took me over to the other side of the house overlooking the valley, indicating that he would show me another thing the device could do... A small fire was burning brightly on the hillside some three hundred yards away, with smoke curling up into the sky. He told me to use the narrow beam, and aim at the fire. I did, and immediately the fire went out. The flame shut off as if suddenly extinguished. The smoke held for a moment or so longer, then it too was gone."

"In retrospect, I still cannot find an alternative, nor do I know of any method, place, person, religious practice (that I would be sure of), drug, or anything else in my fund of knowledge, experience, and information that would absolutely guarantee protection against whatever attacked me. However, there must be something other than the pure "fighting back" in self-defense, even if you don't know what you are fighting. It was the same defense mechanism you would use if you were attacked by an animal at night in the jungle. You don't stop to find a way to fight in the middle of the fight. You don't stop to find out what attacked you. You fight to save yourself, with what you have now, the moment the animal attacks. You fight desperately, not thinking at the time how to fight, why you fight, whom you fight. You have been attacked; the unprovoked attack in itself seems to indicate to you that whatever is attacking you is not good, or else it would not attack you in this manner."

"The question posed most often is: How do you know you aren't dreaming, that what you experience is nothing more than a vivid dream or a hallucination of some sort?"

"Variation in expression under emotional disturbance has long been a special subject of experiment. Little attempt, however, has been made to compare the results so obtained with the appearance of writing under emotional tension. To be sure, the graphologists cite a tendency to elevate progressively the line of writing as an evidence of mental exaltation, of joy or ambition, while a fall in the alignment is indicative of the depressive emotions, self-distrust, sadness, melancholy. Again, a strongly marked tendency toward centrifugal or centripetal movements is held to indicate, on the one hand, ardor, simplicity, activity, uprightness, and, on the other hand, slowness, lack of spontaneity, egoism."

"The relation of the inner word to the outer visible one has long interested psychologists."

"In any case it is evident that there is a psychology as well as a sociology of handwriting. Tremendously complicated as the problem of diagnosis of individual traits from those tiny strokes of the pen appears, it is yet a legitimate problem of science; for the more progress psychology makes, the more evident it becomes that there is not a mode of expression which is not rooted to its finest detail in the complex psycho-physical organism. Meanwhile, it is fortunate that the task of identifying graphic signs should not be left wholly to the intuitions of the graphologist. Experimental work that seeks to induce variation in writing through a control of outer conditions must in time correlate certain definite variations in conditions with variation in such aspects of writing as size, speed, accuracy in alignment, inequality of control and the like."

"We are here brought face to face with the old question that has confronted all investigators of sex-differences. It is evident, however, that the question of the social environment is, in this instance, a controlling one not merely in the discussion of the revelation of sex in handwriting, but also in that of the revelation of intelligence; for there exists a peculiar environment for talent as well as for sex. Indeed, it appears that the investigation of handwriting must be socio-psychological in nature. Unconscious imitation, social suggestibility doubtless play an important, if not all-important, part in determining writing characteristics. On the whole, therefore, it is not surprising that the experts were more successful in distinguishing marked differences in intelligence than in determining the nature of the individual superiority. They perceived the class characteristic, as it were."

"Variation in the amplitude of written characters involves doubtless many important considerations relative to the facilitation and inhibition of movement."

"Writing with attention preoccupied or distracted results variously in the enlargement or dwarfing of characters, an alternative result that seems to depend upon deep-seated tendencies of the individual."

"If it should be shown further that this difference cuts through all the mental activities of the human being, progress would have been made in the difficult matter of the classification of mental types."

"The Earth is an irregular oblate spheroid (a sphere flattened at the poles). Measurements of its dimensions and the amount of its flattening are subjects of geodesy. However, for most navigational purposes, assuming a spherical Earth introduces insignificant error. The Earth’s axis of rotation is the line connecting the north and south geographic poles. A great circle is the line of intersection of a sphere and a plane through its center. This is the largest circle that can be drawn on a sphere. The shortest line on the surface of a sphere between two points on the surface is part of a great circle. On the spheroidal Earth the shortest line is called a geodesic. A great circle is a near enough approximation to a geodesic for most problems of navigation."

"Speculation must wait upon the facts."

"Marine navigation blends both science and art. A good navigator constantly thinks strategically, operationally, and tactically. He plans each voyage carefully. As it proceeds, he gathers navigational information from a variety of sources, evaluates this information, and determines his ship’s position. He then compares that position with his voyage plan, his operational commitments, and his predetermined “dead reckoning” position. A good navigator anticipates dangerous situations well before they arise, and always stays “ahead of the vessel.” He is ready for navigational emergencies at any time. He is increasingly a manager of a variety of resources--electronic, mechanical, and human. Navigation methods and techniques vary with the type of vessel, the conditions, and the navigator’s experience. The navigator uses the methods and techniques best suited to the vessel, its equipment, and conditions at hand. Some important elements of successful navigation cannot be acquired from any book or instructor. The science of navigation can be taught, but the art of navigation must be developed from experience."

"Doubtless the day is far in the future when we shall be able to solve such historical enigmas."

"Handwriting, bearing as it does the cachet of individuality, has always interested those to whom things human make their intimate appeal. Curious observations relative to it have long been current, the existence, for instance, of national as well as family and personal chirographics; the perversions of it that take form as mirror writing or even—it is said—as inverted writing; the whimsy shown by the bizarre characters, by the tendency to irrelevant and extravagant flourishes in the writing of those suffering from certain forms of mental disorder. Attention has been called to the similarity existing between a man's handwriting and the manner in which he walks or gesticulates. It has been claimed that age and sex and profession leave their impress upon writing, that the pen craft of the painter mirrors minutely the grace and distinction that marks the sweep of his brush across the canvas."

"The handwriting of any individual would be found to resemble the characteristic tracings shown by his pulse and respiration and fatigue curves. Nor is the interest in the variational aspect of handwriting restricted to recording the diversities in penmanship from individual to individual; it is also engaged in noting variations from day to day in the handwriting of any given person under the influence of fatigue or emotion or disease. But, however numerous, such observations and however legitimate the speculations they engender, it remains for the physiologist and the psychologist, with the aid perhaps of the sociologist, to compass the scientific study of the variational factor in handwriting."

"A resume of the work that has already been done has perhaps its value at the present time."

"I can only answer that I tried to tell the truth and, if not be objective, at least be fair; history is not served when reporters prize trepidation and propriety over the robust journalistic duty to tell the whole story."

"Culture, ... that standard shield of class, is allowed to surface only in order to become more evidence of ... vanity."

"The conscience exists, standing before us now asking not to be created or perfected but to be chosen and defended, in need of champions, not exiles. Any fiction which refuses that request is henceforth a collaborationist fiction."

"When the house is burning down around the poet's head, on grounds of what if any dispensation can the poet continue the poem?"

"In the end, very like Camus, [Joseph] Heller has tried to buy time for himself and his culture, snarled with lunacy and injustice as it is, by wrapping up everything in a tissue of cynicism and privileged impotence. History being insufferable but unchangeable, he says the good man is therefore morally reprieved from the awful sentence of having to change it. In the company of Camus' solitary rebel, he need only desert."

"In a strong sense, the Old Right and the New Left are morally and politically coordinate."

"In our times, to refrain from mentioning genocide, racism, cultural schizophrenia, sexual exploitation, and the systematic starvation of entire populations is itself a political act. ... As our bankrupt civilization draws to its close, and as the violence of the powerful against the weak, of the rich against the poor, of the few against the many, becomes more and more apparent, until it becomes impossible to watch a news broadcast and remain unaware of it for a second — as this situation becomes exacerbated, to refrain from mentioning it becomes more and more clearly a political act, an act of censorship or cowardice."

"Jewish women in second-wave feminism helped to provide the theoretical underpinnings and models for radical action that were seized on and imitated throughout the United States and abroad. Their articles and books became classics of the movement and led the way into new arenas of cultural and political understanding in academe, politics, and grassroots organizing. Even a partial honor roll of Jewish women's liberation pioneers must include such figures as Shulamith Firestone, Ellen Willis, Robin Morgan, Alix Kates Shulman, Naomi Weisstein, Heather Booth, Susan Brownmiller, Marilyn Webb, Meredith Tax, Andrea Dworkin, Linda Gordon, Ellen DuBois, Ann Snitow, Marge Piercy, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Vivian Gornick. Despite historians' acknowledgment of the salience of Jewish women in earlier social movements, their prominence within radical feminism failed to attract much attention."

"A lot of the young women in the peace movement were really just pushed around by SDS (the student organization). That is, Meredith Tax or Marge Piercy were pushed around by these guys, these young fellows in these student movements, who were really not shallow because they were very smart, but callow and full of male beans and ambition and so forth. And accustomed to or forced to play a certain role. I think the women's movement has done a lot for men, a tremendous lot for them. For men who paid attention it has taken some of the burden of machoism off their backs, which is a terrible burden to bear. If you think about it, it's horrible. It's horrible to have to be that kind of person in order to be a person."

"What Heller finally offers us super-sensitive Westerners is a contemporary world in which we may ignore what threatens us, ... a world in which the summons to partisanship has been muffled if not ridiculed by a nihilism which has recently discovered gaiety, a despair which has learned to frolic in the ruins of a certain hope."

"Cultural products which present women who do not want to be household slaves or universal mothers or sex objects as bitches or sexual failures objectively aid male supremacy."

"Cultural products that present people who have no money or power as innately stupid or depraved, and thus unworthy of money or power, are in the interests of the ruling class and the power structure as it stands."

"Cultural products which present foreign wars as the heroic effort of a master race to ennoble mankind are, to the degree they are successful as art, objectively in the interests of imperialists, who are people who make foreign wars against other races for profit."

"Thinking doesn't guarantee that we won't make mistakes. But not thinking guarantees that we will."

"With so many people doing so much writing, great writing is hard to find ... If you succeed in attaining a position that allows you to do something great, if you do something that really is great, and if you realize that it’s great, there’s still one more hurdle: You have to convince others that it’s great. This will require writing."

"The first thing is deciding what the program should do. If you don’t think carefully about that, it’s going to wind up not doing something that it probably should do or you wind up with an ‘absolute bug-free program’. Because to have a bug, you have to have some notion of what it means for the program to be operating correctly. And there is no precise definition of what it means for the program to be correctly operating — so, well, no bugs. Not a very good situation."

"I think in other things that I've done, I can look back and see: "This idea developed from something else." Sometimes it would lead back to a previous idea of mine, very often it would lead to something somebody else had done. But the Bakery algorithm just seemed to come out of thin air to me. There was nothing like it that preceded it, so perhaps that's why I'm proudest of it."

"A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable."

"We are only in the middle of our development, so we still have a great deal to discover."

"The ultimate quest in the Harry Potter books is that of self-discovery. In that respect, these books share a common theme with the great spiritual guidebooks of humanity. Enlightenment is the ability to answer correctly the question Who am I? ... The same question is the principal subject of all the Upanishads and, indeed, of spiritual treatises in all the great traditions. Harry is on a great quest to discover who he is -- in the simplest, most literal sense of learning about his parents -- but also in the deeper sense of discovering his own nature and his mission in life. That great quest is mirrored in a different quest theme in each book of the series."

"Theosophy holds that all things, including the human mind, are evolving. We are in the midst of an unfinished world and are ourselves unfinished."

"Harry Potter began his education at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the first of seven projected novels: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. In that first novel, Harry was on a quest to find the Philosopher’s Stone, which turns base metal into gold and produces an elixir of immortality. But his real quest in that novel, as in the succeeding books of the series, is for self-knowledge."

"Although this Wisdom has been offered throughout the ages under various names and in many languages, its essence is fundamentally the same, however much its outer aspects and manner of presentation may vary. It especially points to the reality of brotherhood and the imperative necessity of practicing it; but it also gives insight into the unexplained around us and helps the development of our latent powers; and it is the inner harmony of religion, philosophy, and science."

"Watson could so easily have been brushed aside as a crazy kid and an arrogant pest, whose great discovery was a fluke based on others' data. But after much agonizing over what he would do for an encore, he settled for a career of getting things goings. He became an intellectual manager on a vast scale without showing the fatherly instincts of a Niels Bohr."

"The performance record for interdisciplinary gatherings of superstars addressing themselves to world problems is not especially formidable. But quite possibly a new record for chaos and non achievement was established 29 August–2 September in this mountain resort at an international conference on "Technology: Social Goals and Cultural Options," participated in by some 69 scientists, science policy "statesmen," writers, and assorted hangers-on. The proceedings were characterized by anarchic wrangling in which Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel laureate in physics at Caltech, took an exuberant lead in his role as conference cochairman."

"The march of genomics is taking place alongside a background of ethical and spiritual anxieties. Would the information, particularly the theories of evolution that are the core of all biology and medicine, assault people's religious faith? ... Would the information be misused by employers or insurers—or by people wishing to design their offspring?"

"My own “take” on my career is that I was driven to, or striving for, the job of witness to an age of technological change. The main intellectual quest was to grasp history, in the sense of people as different as C.P. Snow and Fernand Braudel and Garrett Mattingly of The Armada, the stumbling and contingent story of how we got where we are. The motto is, “We are fated to survive.” The smart aleck formulation could be: “Nothing so interesting as Armageddon will happen.” My 2017 essay in the 60th anniversary book of my class of 1957 (pages 683-692) at Harvard is entitled, “So We Decided Not to Blow Ourselves Up.""

"In his second year, Harry learns, among other things, about the three marks of existence that the Buddha taught, namely (1) that life involves suffering, (2) that we have no enduring separate self, and (3) that everything is constantly changing or transforming. Indeed, transformation is the key theme of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets."

"Many cities are predominantly white in America, many larger cities; but with Pittsburgh, the whiteness there is a bit thicker, that it’s almost atmospherically white, spiritually white…"

"I have a deep fear of hurting people…I don’t want to be seen as this kind of person. I don’t want my work to be seen as this type of work."

"I’m not this MFA or this academic. I didn’t come through a New York Times or New Yorker pipeline or whatever. I started a blog…Now I’ve written for some of those publications I’ve named, but I wasn’t brought up and groomed that way. Since I haven’t been, it would be fraudulent for me to try to be less accessible just because … that’s just not me."

"…You have to intentionally seek out community. You have to intentionally seek out spaces that are comfortable, that are welcoming. And I think that intentionality just bleeds into the work of people who are from Pittsburgh. It's not a place where you could just laze into blackness. You have to be hyper-cognizant of it…"

"Coco Chanel said something like, “When you’re getting ready to go out, take off one thing.” I think it’s similar with dialogue. Cut it off. Don’t say too much, because then it gets to a place where it’s not natural. Most people don’t go on and on for sentences in real life. Also, when two characters are in a space that’s emotionally raw, they can’t always articulate everything. They’re talking, but not saying the right things. Another thing is to never let people directly answer each other’s questions if you’re trying to create tension."