Themes

"Nature doth, and in it alone is discovered an infinite wisdom, so that Divine Wisdom may be concluded to be infinitely infinite."

"The primary Imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM."

"We know then the existence and nature of the finite, because we also are finite and have extension. We know the existence of the infinite, and are ignorant of its nature, because it has extension like us, but not limits like us. But we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because He has neither extension nor limits."

"Greek mathematical thought does, indeed deal first and last with different kinds of numbers. Were it otherwise, how would it be possible to come to terms with the limitlessness of the material with which arithmetic is confronted? Therefore... theoretical arithmetic... attempts to comprehend all possible groupings of monads in general under arrangements which are determinate, i.e., which possess unambiguous characteristics and which may, in turn, be reduced to their own ultimate elements... Now the most comprehensive eide, those which come closest to the rank of ' and are therefore termed "the very first"... are the odd and the even. ...each of these halves nevertheless comprising an unlimited multitude of numbers. But each of these... is now in turn gathered "into one"... by means of certain unambiguous characteristics..."

"Although velocity was a relative in Newtonian science, yet there did not exist one definite velocity which was assumed to be absolute. This was the infinite velocity. It was assumed that a velocity that was infinite or instantaneous for one observer would remain infinite or instantaneous for all other observers. So far... as velocity was concerned, the sole difference between Einstein and Newton is that with Einstein the absolute or invariant velocity is no longer infinite. ...It is this difference between the invariant velocities of Newton and Einstein which is responsible for all the major differences between classical and Einsteinian science... it is this finiteness of the invariant velocity which precludes us from attaching any absolute value to shape and distance. Einstein's theory proves that molar matter can never move with the absolute speed of light. We are therefore perfectly justified in saying that the velocity of matter remains essentially relative, since it can never attain that critical velocity (i.e., that of light) which is absolute."

"I must have recourse to a Philosophical distinction, and say that the understanding is to be taken two ways, that is intensivè, or extensivè; and that extensive, that is, as to the multitude of intel­ligibles, which are infinite, the understanding of man is as nothing, though he should understand a thousand propositions; for that a thousand, in respect of infinity is but as a cypher: but taking the understanding intensive, (in as much as that term imports) intensively, that is, perfectly some propositions, I say, that humane wis­dom understandeth some propositions so perfectly, and is as abso­lutely certain thereof, as Nature herself; and such are the pure Mathematical sciences, to wit, Geometry and Arithmetick: in which Divine Wisdom knows infinite more propositions, because it knows them all; but I believe that the knowledge of those few compre­hended by humane understanding, equalleth the divine, as to the certainty objectivè, for that it arriveth to comprehend the neces­sity thereof, than which there can be no greater certainty."

"I've been looking for freedom I've been looking so long I've been looking for freedom still the search goes on I've been looking for freedom since I left my home town."

"They have the time The time or their life I saw a man He danced with his wife In Chicago, my home town."

"There is a reason why I came back to this place—came back here instead of to Canelli, Barbaresco or Alba. It is almost certain that I was not born here; where I was born I don't know. There is not a house or a bit of ground or a handful of dust hereabouts of which I can say: "This was me before I was born.""

"That you need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. Your own village means that you're not alone, that you know there's something of you in the people and the plants and the soil, that even when you are not there it waits to welcome you."

"Round my hometown, memories are fresh Round my hometown, ooh, the people I've met Are the wonders of my world"

"Home town, where the garden trees are shady That's where Edie was a lady I'm going back to see those corny country cousins of mine"

"An index is a necessary implement. * * * Without this, a large author is but a labyrinth without a clue to direct the readers within."

"The index tells us the contents of stories and directs to the particular chapters."

"So essential did I consider an index to be to every book, that I proposed to bring a bill into Parliament to deprive an author who publishes a book without an index of the privilege of copyright, and, moreover, to subject him for his offense to a pecuniary penalty."

"How index-learning turns no student pale, Yet holds the eel of science by the tail."

"I certainly think that the best book in the world would owe the most to a good index, and the worst book, if it had but a single good thought in it, might be kept alive by it."

"That roars so loud and thunders in the index."

"And in such indexes, although small pricks To their subsequent volumes, there is seen The baby figure of the giant mass Of things to come at large."

"Never index your own book."

"Darkling I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death"

"For, you trow, nuncle, The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, That it's had it head bit off by it young. So, out went the candle, and we were left darkling."

"Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night."

"Aux armes, citoyens."

"(Russian: Без дела не вынимай, без славы не вкладывай)"

"Removing the threat of a world war—a nuclear war—is the most acute and urgent task of the present day. Mankind is confronted with a choice: we must halt the arms race and proceed to disarmament or face annihilation."

"(Russian: Кинжал хорош для того, у кого он есть, и горе тому, у кого его не окажется в нужное время.)"

"Statesmen of dedication and sincerity, many of them in this hall, have done their utmost to arrest this development. Yet the arms race goes on. It is as if the arms race had escaped rational human control."

"During these four years the arms race has exacerbated the threat to peace, heightening the anxieties of peoples and imposing heavier burdens on each nation at the expense of its economic and social development."

"Iron, at the same time the most useful and the most fatal instrument in the hand of mankind. For by the aid of iron we lay open the ground, we plant trees, we prepare our vineyard-trees, and we force our vines each year to resume their youthful state, by cutting away their decayed branches. It is by the aid of iron that we construct houses, cleave rocks, and perform so many other useful offices of life. But it is with iron also that wars, murders, and robberies are effected, and this, not only hand to hand, but from a distance even, by the aid of missiles and winged weapons, now launched from engines, now hurled by the human arm, and now furnished with feathery wings. This last I regard as the most criminal artifice that has been devised by the human mind; for, as if to bring death upon man with still greater rapidity, we have given wings to iron and taught it to fly."

"After he had brought them all to wear full armor, and by that means into the confidence of thinking themselves now invincible, he turned what before had been idle profusion and luxury into an honorable expense. For being long used to vie with each other in their dress, the furniture of their houses, and service of their tables, and to glory in outdoing one another, the disease by custom was grown incurable, and there was no possibility of removing it altogether. But he diverted the passion, and brought them, instead of these superfluities, to love useful and more manly display, and, reducing their other expenses, to take delight in appearing magnificent in their equipage of war. Nothing then was to be seen in the shops but plate breaking up, or melting down, gilding of breastplates, and studding bucklers and bits with silver; nothing in the places of exercise, but horses managing, and young men exercising their arms; nothing in the hands of the women, but helmets and crests of feathers to be dyed, and military cloaks and riding-frocks to be embroidered; the very sight of all which quickening and raising their spirits, made them contemn dangers, and feel ready to venture on any honorable dangers. Other kinds of sumptuosity give us pleasure, but make us effeminate; the tickling of the sense slackening the vigor of the mind; but magnificence of this kind strengthens and heightens the courage; as Homer makes Achilles at the sight of his new arms exulting with joy, and on fire to use them. When Philopoemen had obtained of them to arm, and set themselves out in this manner, he proceeded to train them, mustering and exercising them perpetually; in which they obeyed him with great zeal and eagerness. For they were wonderfully pleased with their new form of battle, which, being so knit and cemented together, seemed almost incapable of being broken. And then their arms, which for their riches and beauty they wore with pleasure, becoming light and easy to them with constant use, they longed for nothing more than to try them with an enemy, and fight in earnest."

"Language was our secret weapon, and as soon we got language we became a really dangerous species."

"Stop quoting laws, we carry weapons!"

"Kennedy would have ordered nuclear retaliation on Cuba —and perhaps the Soviet Union— if nuclear weapons had been fired at United States forces."

"Nuclear weapons serve no military purpose whatsoever. They are totally useless — except only to deter one’s opponent from using them."

"Henri Ducard: Over the ages, our weapons have grown more sophisticated. With Gotham, we tried a new one - economics. But, we underestimated certain of Gotham's citizens. Such as your parents. Gunned down by one of the very people they were trying to help. Create enough hunger and everyone becomes a criminal."

"Isolated as they are within a distinctly outcast category, CB weapons have acquired an array of moral and legal proscriptions that is unique among present-day armaments. This, however, is something with which most novel weapon technologies of the past have had to contend. Users of the crossbow, for example, in twelfth century Europe risked excommunication by the Church, and gunpowder went through a long period of moral opprobrium before becoming assimilated. People eventually became accustomed to these developments, and the weapons became conventional. Incendiary weapons provide a further example: witness the obloquy that fastened upon the recorded users of Greek fire in medieval Europe, or P.G.T. Beauregarde's expressions of moral outrage during the American Civil War, or the special attention given to flamethrowers in the League of Nations disarmament deliberations, and then the increasing conventionalization of napalm and other incendiaries during the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Korean war and Vietnam."

"There will be no economic or political justice for the poor, people of color, women or workers within the framework of global, corporate capitalism. Corporate capitalism, which uses identity politics, multiculturalism and racial justice to masquerade as politics, will never halt the rising social inequality, unchecked militarism, evisceration of civil liberties and omnipotence of the organs of security and surveillance. Corporate capitalism cannot be reformed, despite its continually rebranding itself. The longer the self-identified left and liberal class seek to work within a system that the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls “inverted totalitarianism,” the more the noose will be tightened around our necks. If we do not rise up to bring government and financial systems under public control—which includes nationalizing banks, the fossil fuel industry and the arms industry—we will continue to be victims."

"They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

"Rod Serling: The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices...to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill...and suspicion can destroy...and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own -- for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is...that these things cannot be confined...to the Twilight Zone."

"Five tomahawks, wi’ blude red-rusted: Five scimitars, wi’ murder crusted; A garter which a babe had strangled: A knife, a father’s throat had mangled."

"I have no part of my body, in front at least, that is left without scars; there is no weapon, used at close quarters, or hurled from afar, of which I do not carry the mark. Nay, I have been wounded by the sword, hand to hand; I have been shot with arrows, I have been struck from a catapult, smitten many a time with stones and clubs."

"It is ironic that the accumulation of arms is one of the few expanding industries in a period of economic depression and gloom."

"I know they’re weapons of war. However, there’s a beauty in unadorned functionality totally separate from that. Fighter planes and battleships have a simple, unadorned beauty I’m drawn to. But I don’t want to see them in action, killing people."

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed. . . . This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending . . . the hopes of its children."

"Of all the stops on the nuclear weapons assembly line, plutonium production is the dirtiest. Each kilogram of final product generates hundreds of thousand gallons of radioactive waste. ... Chernobyl is a household word. Why have so few people heard of Hanford and Maiak?"

"Count Dashkov: I am convinced there is a deep conspiracy afoot in Russia that is poisoning people’s minds. This evil is a threat to the monarchy itself! But it must be suppressed with powerful weapons!"

"The danger is becoming greater. As the arsenals of the superpowers grow in size and sophistication and as other governments—perhaps even, in the future, dozens of governments—acquire these weapons, it may be only a matter of time before madness, desperation, greed or miscalculation lets loose the terrible force."

"Research desk: Despite the Russian court’s condemnation and the Dodd Keating congressional report in 1964, the world wide use and publication of the “Protocols” has continued. Not only did the Ku Klux Klan continue to distribute the book in America.. but in 1968, in Beiruit, the Islamic institute there published 300,000 copies in French, Italian, Spanish, and Arabic."

"The best measure of the Allied advantage was in terms of military hardware, however, since it was with capital rather than labour - with machinery rather than manpower - that the Germans and the Japanese were ultimately to be defeated. In every major category of weapon, the Axis powers fell steadily further behind with each passing month. Between 1942 and 1944, the Allies out-produced the Axis in terms of machine pistols by a factor of 16 to 1, in naval vessels, tanks and mortars by roughly 5 to 1, and in rifles, machine-guns, artillery and combat aircraft by roughly 3 to 1. Blitzkrieg had been possible when the odds were just the other way round. Once both sides were motorized - one of the defining characteristics of total war - the key to victory became logistics, not heroics. The fourfold numerical superiority of British armour was one of the deciding factors at El Alamein. The average ratio of Soviet to German armour at the beginning of the offensives of 1944 and 1945 was just under eight. The ratio in terms of combat aircraft on the Eastern Front rose from three in July 1943 to ten by January 1945. Likewise, Allied dominance of the skies ensured the success of D-Day and guaranteed the ultimate defeat of the Germans in Western Europe."