Vegetarians

"When you listen as fiercely as you want to be heard, when you respect the idea that you are sharing the Earth with other humans, and when you lead with your nice foot forward, you will win, every time. It might not be today, it might not be tomorrow, but it comes back to you when you need it. We live in an age of instant gratification, of immediate likes, and it is uncomfortable to have to wait to see the dividends of your kindness, but I promise you it will appear exactly when you need it."

"It shouldn't be a Republican or Democratic issue whether we take care of the environment. That should be a human issue."

"A lot of times we look at the whole world and think, 'it's so daunting, how can we change the whole world?' and you don't need to do that, what you need to do is change your world a little bit, and see if you can, through example, inspire others to do the same thing."

"My goal has not ever been to change minds, my goal is to open minds."

"I think after 9/11, when we were in our moment of greatest sadness as a nation... this small group of neo-conservatives used our pain in order to set their agenda on their course."

"The human interest, and the natural interest, and the spiritual interest of this planet need to begin to take a priority over the corporate interest, the military interest, and the materialistic interests."

"I've never really been into flags of any kind, cause flags can bring people together, but they always bring people together against other people, and I don't really consider myself to be a patriot in the sense that I say, 'okay, this is my nation,' I consider myself to be a child of this whole planet."

"People ask me a lot, 'what can one person do,' and I say 'I'm not really sure what one person can due except come together with other people.'"

"You say you're a Christian, cause God made you, you say you're a Muslim cause God made you, you say you're a Hindu and the next man a Jew, but then we all kill each other cause God told us to? Naw!"

"Every bit of land is a holy land, and every drop of water is a holy water, and every single child is a son or a daughter of the one earth mama, and the one earth papa."

"I'm glad Bush is coming out so strongly against gay marriage, because I think it's time in this country for people to wake up... If your partner happens to be the same sex as you, I don't have a problem with that and I don't think anyone else should. We're not doing a service to our kids by cloistering them from reality. It's better to discuss reality."

"Sometimes, I feel like I can do anything, and, sometimes, I'm so alive, sometimes, I feel like I could zoom across the sky and, sometimes, I wanna cry."

"The harder they hit us, the louder we become, kind of like the skin on a drum."

"Don't fear the nighttime, cause the monsters know that you're divine. Don't fear the sunshine, cause everything's better in the summertime"

"We can bomb the world to pieces, but we can't bomb it into peace."

"Life is too short to make just one decision, music is too loud for just one station, love is too big for just one nation, and God is too big for just one religion!"

"Those who start wars never fight them, and those who fight wars never like them."

"The Volta is taken from a Federico Fellini book about his films, what he characterizes as a changing of scene, or a turnaround; a new scene to him is called Volta. Y'know, changing of time and the changeover. And Mars, we're just fascinated by science fiction so and it's something that ultimately looked as in anything I write, its meaning is always up to the listener. As the way we write songs and words, if it looks great on paper then to us it's like painting, so if it looks good meaning the second then people usually have a better interpretation than we ever would."

"You shouldn't speak until you know what you're talking about. That's why I get uncomfortable with interviews. Reporters ask me what I feel China should do about Tibet. Who cares what I think China should do? I'm a fucking actor! They hand me a script. I act. I'm here for entertainment. Basically, when you whittle everything away, I'm a grown man who puts on makeup."

"Being married means I can break wind and eat ice cream in bed."

"Fame is a bitch, man."

"Empedocles... changed... [Greek philosophy] from monism to a kind of pluralism. To avoid the difficulty that one primary substance cannot explain the variety of things and events, he assumed four basic elements, earth, water, air and fire.... mixed... and separated by... Love and Strife. Therefore, these latter two... are responsible for the imperishable change. Empedocles describes the formation of the world... First, ...the infinite Sphere of the One, as in the philosophy of Parmenides. But in the primary substance all the four "roots" are mixed... by Love. Then, when Love is passing out and Strife coming in, the elements are partially separated and partially combined. After that the elements are completely separated and Love is outside the World. Finally, Love is bringing the elements together again and Strife is passing out, so... we return to the original Sphere. This doctrine... represents... a more materialistic view... Here for the first time... a few [fundamentally different] substances... explains the infinite variety of things and events. Pluralism never appeals to those who are wont to think in fundamental principles. But it is a reasonable... compromise, which avoids the difficulty of monism and allows... some order."

"His teachings formed a series of poems some five thousand verses in length. Only a hundred and fifty verses have survived from... On Nature yet, the relics are more substantial than those from any other Greek philosopher. From them we can extract a theory which... tackles all three problems of Greek science. ...(a) What are the stable principles behind the flux? (b) What process is responsible for the changes in the flux? (c) What agencies control this process? To these questions Empedokles replied... (a) The enduring principles in the natural world are the four basic types of matter—solid, liquid, fiery and aeriform. ...they are conserved in all material transformations. (b) Change comes about through the mingling and separation of these... which unite in different proportions to produce... familiar objects... (c) The agents responsible... are the two universal powers acting in opposition, which he called allegorically, Love and Strife. ...[T]his [as an explicit theory] was the first appearance in our scientific tradition of an important intellectual model. ...[A]ll material things are organized mixtures of different elementary substances ...And, as developed by his contemporary Anaxagoras, and later by the atomists, this type of matter-theory has been in circulation ever since."

"I keep hearing I'm a crazy party guy … I'm not. I'm boring... At least by party standards."

"He tried to address the problem of change by saying that there is not one fundamental arche but four—earth, water, air, and fire—which generate all the material substances in nature by mixing together in various ways under the influence of forces he called Love and Strife."

"Alcmaeon was, says [J.] Wachtler, the first who attempted to explain the phenomenon of sound and our perception of it by reference to the structure of the ear itself. Empedocles to some extent follows or agrees with him. ...Empedocles teaches that hearing is caused by the impact of the air-wave against the cartilage which is suspended within the ear, oscillating as it is struck, like a gong."

"I've always paid attention to religion … because I grew up in a religious background, but I've never felt a part of any of them. I think there's something to be drawn from most of them — other than goat sacrificing."

"The Greeks elaborated several theories of vision. According to the Pythagoreans, Democritus, and others vision is caused by the projection of particles from the object seen, into the pupil of the eye. On the other hand Empedocles, the Platonists, and Euclid held the strange doctrine of ocular beams, according to which the eye itself sends out something which causes sight as soon as it meets something else emanated by the object."

"ἔστιν ἀνάγκης χρῆμα, θεῶν ψήφισμα παλαιόν, εὖτέ τις ἀμπλακίῃσι φόνῳ φίλα γυῖα μιήνῃ, δαίμονες οἵ τε μακραίωνος λελάχασι βίοιο, τρίς μιν μυρίας ὥρας ἀπὸ μακάρων ἀλάλησθαι, τὴν καὶ ἐγὼ νῦν εἶμι, φυγὰς θεόθεν καὶ ἀλήτης"

"ἤδη γάρ ποτ’ ἐγὼ γενόμην κοῦρός τε κόρη τε/θάμνος τ’ οἰωνός τε καὶ ἔξαλος ἔλλοπος ἰχθύς."

"ἐξ οἵης τιμῆς τε καὶ ὅσσου μήκεος ὄλβου/ὧδε [πεσὼν κατὰ γαῖαν] ἀναστρέφομαι μετὰ θνητοῖς."

"ὄλβιος, ὅς θείων πραπίδων ἐκτήσατο πλοῦτον,/δειλὸς δ’, ὧι σκοτόεσσα θεῶν πέρι δόξα μέμηλεν."

"αἰθήρ [δ’ αὖ] μακρῆισι κατὰ χθόνα δύετο ῥίζαις."

"γῆς ἱδρῶτα θάλασσαν."

"ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν πάντων νόμιμον διάτ᾽ εὐρυμέδοντος/αἰθέρος ἠνεκέως τέταται διά τ᾽ ἀπλέτου αὐγῆς"

"μία γίγνεται ἀμφοτέρων ὄψ."

"ἧι γὰρ καὶ πάρος ἔσκε, καὶ ἔσσεται, οὐδέ ποτ’, οἴω,/τούτων ἀμφοτέρων κενεώσεται ἄσπετος αἰών."

"ἀλλ’ ἄγε μύθων κλῦθι· μάθη γάρ τοι φρένας αὔξει· ὡς γὰρ καὶ πρὶν ἔειπα πιφαύσκων πείρατα μύθων, δίπλ’ ἐρέω· τοτὲ μὲν γὰρ ἕν ηὐξήθη μόνον ῏ειναι ἐκ πλεόνων, τοτὲ δ’ αὖ διέφυ πλέον’ ἐξ ἑνὸς εἶναι, πῦρ καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ γαῖα καὶ ἠέρος ἄπλετον ὕψος, Νεῖκος τ’ οὐλόμενον δίχα τῶν, ἀτάλαντον ἁπάντηι. καὶ Φιλότης ἐν τοῖσιν, ἴση μῆκός τε πλάτος τε· τὴν σὺ νόωι δέρκευ, μηδ’ ὄμμασιν ἧσο τεθηπώς· ἥτις καὶ θνητοῖσι νομίζεται ἔμφυτος ἄρθροις, τῆι τε φίλα φρονέουσι καὶ ἄρθμια ἔργα τελοῦσι, Γηθοσύνην καλέοντες ἐπώνυμον ἠδ’ Ἀφροδίτην·"

"…καὶ δὶς γάρ, ὅ δεῖ, καλόν ἐστιν ἐνισπεῖν."

"πάντα γὰρ ἑξείης πελεμίζετο γυῖα θεοῖο."

"νηστεῦσαι κακότητος."

"τέσσαρα γὰρ πάντων ῥιζώματα πρῶτον ἄκουε· Ζεὺς ἀργὴς Ἥρη τε φερέσβιος ἠδ’ Ἀιδωνεύς Νῆστίς θ’, ἥ δακρύοις τέγγει κρούνωμα βρότειον."

"ἄλλο δέ τοι ἐρέω· φύσις οὐδενός ἐστιν ἁπάντων θνητῶν, οὐδέ τις οὐλομένου θανάτοιο τελευτή, ἀλλὰ μόνον μίξις τε διάλλαξίς τε μιγέντων ἐστί, φύσις δ’ἐπὶ τοῖς ὀνομάζεται ἀνθρώποισιν."

"But, when the elements have been mingled in the fashion of a man and come to the light of day, or in the fashion of the race of wild beasts or plants or birds, then men say that these come into being; and when they are separated, they call that woeful death. They call it not aright; but I too follow the custom, and call it so myself."

"νήπιοι· οὐ γάρ σφιν δολιχόφρονές εἰσι μέριμναι, οἵ δὴ γίγνεσθαι πάρος οὐκ ἐὸν ἐλπίζουσιν ἤ τι καταθνήισκειν τε καὶ ἐξόλλυσθαι ἁπάντηι."

"οὐδέ τι τοῦ παντὸς κενεὸν πέλει οὐδὲ περισσόν."

"The Fabric of the Cosmos covers a wider field than The Elegant Universe and paints it with a broader brush. There is not much overlap between the two books. ...Neither is a prerequisite for reading the other. The new book is easier, and should preferably be read first. Readers who get stuck halfway through The Elegant Universe may find the new book more digestible."

"Greene takes it for granted, and here the great majority of physicists agree with him, that the division of physics into separate theories for large and small objects is unacceptable. ...Greene believes that there is an urgent need to find a theory of quantum gravity that applies to large and small objects alike. ...As a conservative, I do not agree that a division of physics into separate theories for large and small is unacceptable. ...The essence of any theory of quantum gravity is that there exists a particle called the graviton... I looked at various possible ways of detecting gravitons and did not find a single one that worked. Because of the extreme weakness of the gravitational interaction, any putative detector of gravitons has to be extremely massive. If the detector has normal density, most of it is too far from the source of gravitons to be effective, and if it is compressed to a high density around the source it collapses into a black hole. There seems to be a conspiracy of nature to prevent the detector from working."

"He introduced a whole new set of physicists to join the pantheon that includes Einstein, Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli, James Chadwick, Roger Penrose, and Stephen Hawking. Among these new names Edward Witten stands out, together with Eugenio Calabi, Theodor Kaluza, Andrew Strominger, Stein Stømme, Cumrun Vafa, Gabriele Veneziano, and Shing-Tung Yau, about as international a group of names as you could find anywhere."

"... I knew a guy, Brian Greene. I helped him to get a summer job at IBM because people told me he was brilliant, and he was. And when I heard that he had gotten a professorship at Columbia, it was described to me like this. It was a joint professorship between the physics and the math department, because the math department thought what he was doing was physics, and the physics department thought that what he was doing was math."