All Quotes

"It’s a very specific moment. I learned how to program on basically a simulation of a computer that was on paper. It was part of my after-school program for gifted kids, and that night I explained to the media how it worked. So, my media career and my A.I. career began that day."

"I didn’t know too much about, but they thought it’d be fun to have a human interest story. They nominated me to do the explanation, you know, cute kid explaining what a computer is. And I saw it on TV that night. There’s no archival footage that we can find, but I did actually see it on my father’s little black and white TV later that night."

"I’ve never been fully optimistic about it. I don’t think we’ve made as much progress as I’d hoped that we would. I would have guessed that 40 years after I was looking at this, that a lot of A.I. would have been solved problems."

"We have a lot of tools now that are very useful. But I think the bigger questions of, like, how do you represent and acquire knowledge? You still don’t have really good answers to those. So I’ve never reached a point of being really satisfied. I always want it to go better."

"I started writing about it right away in my Substack and I said immediately that it’s going to excite people but it has limits."

"“Lesbians eat their young.”"

"“I do feel very proud of what I have accomplished in my life, given where I came from (and I don’t mean Detroit). In a small circle, I’m respected and cared for. That’s way more than I ever expected. … I’m not done yet. There’s a whole world that’s all screwed up and I know that I can’t personally fix it, but I want to be one of the people who is making things better and more humane. I want to be one of the people who makes history rather than just one who reads it.”"

"“I can do something really big and really impactful here.""

""There’s so much opportunity to solve problems.”"

""For too long, Africa has leaned on imported solutions, paying premiums for software and services – But as we say, ‘Yes, there is rice at home!’ And now, there’s a cloud built here for us, and it’s just as good, not better.”"

"“At Okra, we fundamentally believe that convenience trumps everything, and part of our mission is to constantly improve the experience consumers have with their favourite Bank & Fintech apps by enabling the builders.""

"we built impactful technology, worked with some of the biggest brands across the continent, and helped pioneer open banking in Africa."

"flowers show various adaptations to attract s—in the form of colour, pattern or scent or a combination of these factors. Flowers which are pollinated by butterflies and moths are usually heavily scented, especially those which are visited at night."

"Colour is of prime importance to life on earth: plants use it to attract s and to aid dispersal of their fruit; animals use it to attract mates, as s and as ."

"In addition to photographing flowers extensively on both sides the Atlantic, I have been fortunate to work in locations as diverse as South Africa, China, the Galápagos Islands, the high Arctic, the , and the Himalayas, and to participate in an unforgettable pony trek to Kashmir. Photographing garden flowers may not involve such intrepid expeditions, but it can be equally challenging and rewarding nonetheless. In fact, the current vogue of s has blurred the traditional distinctions between garden flowers and ."

"From the discovery of , we know that the once existed over a much larger range extending into Burma and northern Vietnam in the south, in China almost as far north as Beijing, the capital, and near Hong Kong and Shanghai in the east. Changes in climate reduced some of the panda's range, but in the twentieth century, the prime factor has been the rapid encroachment of the human population on the . As native forests have been logged or clear-cut for agriculture, suitable panda habitat has continued to shrink, until today it is confined to six mountain ranges running southwest from south of to south of along the eastern edge of the ."

"As the sun dips towards the horizon, a huge white ice arch becomes suffused with a pink glow. In front of this amazing backdrop hundreds of s huddle together as the temperature plummets to -30ºC. It had taken me almost 2 weeks to reach this part of in an and several hours trudging over the ice to reach this spot, but I knew this moment would live with me forever. As I savoured the pristine wilderness, I reflected that had I chosen another path as a career I would never have experienced this magical moment. By the time I married Martin (a fellow zoologist) at the age of 23, I presumed I would carve out a career as a for life. After all, I had a zoology degree and had been doing marine biological research for 3 years. I never dreamt I would abandon my love for the marine world and develop an even greater passion for photography. Yet, it was only a few years later that I took the plunge to work as a freelance ."

"Keep in mind that the people who go to the theatre tend to be older. I put on a theatre show two years ago now or a year and a half, something like that,"

"it’s important to not just sit around and wait for somebody else to give you work: “It's nice if somebody else does, but you can't survive in this industry [if you don’t] create your own stuff.”"

"So you're playing to your audience in a way. And of course, because when you get older, there's not much on the stage that reflects you. People love to see themselves reflected on the stage. ... That's what theatre should be. It should be telling us stuff about ourselves. And when you get to be over 70, that's what we're doing,"

"‘We don’t really believe that computers can have emotions, but we see that emotions have a certain function in human practical reasoning,’ says Mehdi Dastani, an artificial-intelligence researcher at Utrecht University, in the Netherlands. By bestowing intelligent agents with similar emotions, researchers hope that robots can then emulate this human-like reasoning."

"Dastani’s emotional functions have been derived from a psychological model known as the OCC model, devised in 1988 by a trio of psychologists: Andrew Ortony and Allan Collins, of Northwestern University, and Gerald Clore, of the University of Virginia. ‘Different psychologists have come up with different sets of emotions,’ says Dastani. But his group decided to use this particular model because it specified emotions in terms of objects, actions, and events.”"

"Creativity does not originate from a vacuum."

"It made me appreciate what humans were capable of."

"Every limitation we place on the potential of machines is a limitation we indirectly place on ourselves."

"I see no reason why computer-created music cannot move us to tears, find roots in our cultures...as much as any music composed in more traditional ways. As heretical to some as these thoughts may be, I believe them profoundly."

"I felt strongly that the work was worth something,” “I don’t worry about what people think of me.”"

"“I remember thinking, ‘I’m not a white person and I’m not an Indian. What am I? Even at that young age, it somehow freed me from following cultural stereotypes. I was me, and it felt very good."

"Realizing that I didn’t belong has probably fostered my lifelong ability to not be concerned about those who attack me for being independent,” “I follow my own calling.”"

"The works have delighted, angered, provoked, and terrified those who have heard them. I do not believe that the composers and audiences of the future will have the same reactions. Ultimately, the computer is just a tool with which we extend our minds."

"Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye."

"Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food."

"The worst misfortune that can happen to an ordinary man is to have an extraordinary father."

"The statesman shears the sheep, the politician skins them."

"The fact that you have been knocked down is interesting, but the length of time you remained down is important."

"The best blood will at some time get into a fool or a mosquito."

"An essential quality of beauty is aloofness."

"Revenge is often like biting a dog because the dog bit you."

"Before you beat a child, be sure you yourself are not the cause of the offense."

"If you keep your eyes so fixed on Heaven that you never look at the Earth, you will stumble into Hell."

"Reason clears and plants the wilderness of the imagination to harvest the wheat of art."

"The smaller the head the bigger the dream."

"Every April God rewrites the book of Genesis."

"After thirty-five a man begins to have thoughts about women; before that age he has feelings."

"In levying taxes and in shearing sheep it is well to stop when you get down to the skin."

"Practical prayer is harder on the soles of your shoes than on the knees of your trousers."

"Show me a genuine case of platonic friendship, and I shall show you two old or homely faces."

"Those that think it permissible to tell white lies soon grow color-blind."

"A home-made friend wears longer than one you buy in the market."

"When you are dealing with a child, keep all your wits about you, and sit on the floor."