Academics From The United Kingdom

"There has never been another moment in English history to equal the promise of that moment in the 1660’s when the Royal Society was formally founded. And though it was less dramatic elsewhere, it was a high moment throughout Europe."

"Newton was born during Cromwell’s revolution in the troubled 1640s; he was eighteen at the Restoration in 1660; and he published the Principia during the intrigues which ended by bringing William of Orange to England in the revolution of 1688. These are the moments when the powerful or the forceful character feels the ferment of the times, when his thoughts quicken and when he can inject into the uncertainties of others the creative ideas which will strengthen them with purpose. At such a moment the man who can direct others, in thought or in action, can remake the world."

"Unhappily, common sense has no recorded history."

"There are three creative ideas which, each in its turn, have been central to science. They are the idea of order, the idea of causes, and the idea of chance."

"Science and the arts shared the same language at the Restoration. They no longer seem to do so today. But the reason is that they share the same silence: they lack the same language. And it is the business of each of us to make that one universal language which alone can unite art and science, and layman and scientist, in a common understanding."

"Science changes our values in two ways. It injects new ideas into the familiar culture. And it subjects it to the pressure of technical change, in the way I have just been describing, until the whole basis of our culture has imperceptibly been remade."

"Many people affect to believe that science has progressively strangled the arts, or distorted them into some unpleasant “modern” form; and therefore that the arts can be revived only by throwing over science. Often of course this is merely an elderly sentiment in favour of the art of our younger days, and the real scapegoat is not science but change."

"Science is not a special sense. It is as wide as the literal meaning of its name: knowledge."

"If the present study has any significance at all, this results not least from its opposition to this mingling of what is and what ought to be, of scientific analysis with ideals."

"A heightened control of the affects, developed in society and learned by the individual, and above all a heightened degree of autonomous affect control, was needed in order for the world-picture centred on the earth and the people living on it to be overcome by one which, like the heliocentric world-picture, agreed better with the observable facts but was at first far less satisfying emotionally; for it removed human beings from their position at the centre of the universe and placed them on one of many planets circling about the centre."

"One of the peculiarities of the traditional human self-image is that people often speak and think of individuals and societies as if these were two phenomena existing separately—of which, moreover, one is often considered "real" and the other "unreal"—instead of two different aspects of the same human being."

"But at that particular stage in the development of these more object-related than self-related conceptual instruments for exploring extra-human nature, it was apparently not possible to include in the investigation, and to reflect upon, this civilizational shift itself, the move towards stronger and more "internalised" self-control that was taking place within people themselves. What was happening to human beings as they increased their understanding of nature remained at first inaccessible to scientific insight. It is not a little characteristic of this stage of self-consciousness that the classical theories of knowledge representing it are concerned far more with the problems of the object of knowledge than with the subject of knowledge, with object-perception than with self-perception."

"The psychogenesis of the adult make-up in civilized society cannot, therefore be understood if considered independently of the sociogenesis of our "civilization." ... Individuals, in their short history, pass once more through some of the processes that their society has traversed in its long history."

"The development of the idea that the earth circles round the sun in a purely mechanical way in accordance with natural laws—that is, in a way not in the least determined by any purpose relating to mankind, and therefore no longer possessing any great emotional significance for people—presupposed and demanded at the same time a development in human beings themselves towards increased emotional control, a greater restraint of their spontaneous feeling that everything they experience and everything that concerns them takes its stamp from them, is the expression of an intention, a destiny, a purpose relating to themselves. Now, in the age that we call "modern", people have reached a stage of self-detachment that enables them to conceive of natural processes as an autonomous sphere operating in a purely mechanical or causal way without intention or purpose or destiny, and having a meaning or purpose for themselves only if they are in a position, through objective knowledge, to control it and thereby to give it a meaning and a purpose."

"I wish you all the pleasurable excitement one can have without hurting others and one's own dignity."

"For both the rich and the poor, life is dominated by an ever growing current of problems, most of which seem to have no real and lasting solution. Clearly we have not touched the deeper causes of our troubles. It is the main point of this book that the ultimate source of all these problems is in thought itself, the very thing of which our civilization is most proud, and therefore the one thing that is "hidden" because of our failure seriously to engage with its actual working in our own individual lives and in the life of society."

"When streams of unkindness, as bitter as gall, Bubble up from the heart to the tongue, And Meekness is writhing in torment and thrall, By the hands of Ingratitude wrung, — In the heat of injustice, unwept and unfair, While the anguish is festering yet, None, none but an angel or God can declare "I now can forgive and forget.""

""Let byegones be byegones,”—they foolishly say, And bid me be wise and forget them; But old recollections are active to-day, And I can do nought but regret them; Though the present be pleasant, all joyous and gay, And promising well for the morrow, I love to look back on the years past away, Embalming my byegones in sorrow."

"Rise! ye gallant youth of Britain, Gather to your country's call, On your hearts her name is written, Rise to help her, one and all!"

"The dews of Hermon rest upon thee now, Fair saint and martyr! and yet once again Faith, hope and charity, like gracious rain, Fall on thy consecrated virgin brow."

"Hush,—for the halo of calmness is spreading Over my spirit as mild as a dove; Hush,—for the angel of comfort is shedding Over my body his vial of love; Hush,—for new slumbers are over me stealing, Thus would I court them again and again, Hush,—for my heart is intoxicate,—reeling In the swift waltz of my beautiful brain!"

"Open the casement, and up with the Sun! His gallant journey is just begun; Over the hills his chariot is roll'd, Banner'd with glory, and burnish'd with gold,— Over the hills he comes sublime, Bridegroom of Earth, and brother of Time!"

"How gladly would I wander through some strange and savage land, The lasso at my saddle-bow, the rifle in my hand, A leash of gallant mastiffs bounding by my side, And, for a friend to love, the noble horse on which I ride! Alone, alone—yet not alone, for God is with me there, The tender hand of Providence shall guide me everywhere, While happy thoughts and holy hopes, as spirits calm and mild, Shall fan with their sweet wings the hermit-hunter of the wild!"

"Who shall guess what I may be? Who can tell my fortune to me? For, bravest and brightest that ever was sung May be — and shall be — the lot of the young!"

"For life, good youth, hath never an ill Which hope cannot scatter, and faith cannot kill; And stubborn realities never shall bind The free-spreading wings of a cheerful mind."

"Never give up! it is wiser and better Always to hope, than once to despair. Fling off the load of Doubt's cankering fetter, And break the dark spell of tyrannical care."

"Eye hath not seen, tongue hath not told, And ear hath not heard it sung, How buoyant and bold, though it seem to grow old, Is the heart, forever young; — Forever young, — though life's old age Hath every nerve unstrung: The heart, the heart, is a heritage That keeps the old man young!"

"A dream, a dream, — it is all a dream, A strange, sad dream, good sooth; For old as I am, and old as I seem, My heart is full of youth."

"I am not old, — I cannot be old, Though tottering, wrinkled, and gray ; Though my eyes are dim, and my marrow is cold, Call me not old to-day."

"I am not old, — I cannot be old, Though threescore years and ten Have wasted away, like a tale that is told, The lives of other men: I am not old ; though friends and foes Alike have gone to their graves, And left me alone to my joys or my woes, As a rock in the midst of the waves."

"His fashion is passion, sincere and intense, — His impulse is simple and true; Yet temper'd by judgment, and taught by good sense, And cordial with me and with you."

"Fearless in honesty, gentle yet just, He warmly can love, and can hate; Nor will he bow down, with his face in the dust, To Fashion's intolerant state;"

"Away with false fashion, so calm and so chill, Where pleasure itself cannot please; Away with cold breeding, that faithlessly still Affects to be quite at its ease; For the deepest in feeling is highest in rank, The freest is first of the band, Nature's own Nobleman, friendly and frank, Is a man with his heart in his hand!"

"O fair, false city, thou gay and gilded harlot! Wo for thy wanton heart, wo for thy wicked hardness! Wo unto thee, that the lightsomeness of life, beneath Italian suns, Should meet the solemnity of death, in a sepulchre so foul and fearful!"

"Naples sitteth by the sea, keystone of an arch of azure, Crowned by consenting nations peerless queen of gayety: She laugheth at the wrath of Ocean, she mocketh the fury of Vesuvius, She spurneth disease, and misery, and famine, that crowd her sunny streets."

"Who can wrestle against Sleep? — Yet is that giant very gentleness."

"Clamorous pauperism feasteth While honest Labor, pining, hideth his sharp ribs."

"Wait, thou child of hope, for Time shall teach thee all things."

"If the mind is wearied by study, or the body worn with sickness, It is well to lie fallow for a while, in the vacancy of sheer amusement ; But when thou prosprest in health, and thine intellect can soar untired, To seek uninstructive pleasure is to slumber on the couch of indolence."

"Tell me, ye that strive in vain to cramp and dwarf the soul, Wherefore should it cease to be, and when shall essence die?"

"God, from a beautiful necessity, is Love in all he doeth, Love, a brilliant fire, to gladden or consume: The wicked work their woe by looking upon love, and hating it: The righteous find their joys in yearning on its loveliness for ever."

"A babe in the house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of peace and love, a resting place for innocence on earth, a link between angels and men."

"A good book is the best of friends, the same today and forever."

"Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech."

"There is a limit to enjoyment, though the sources of wealth be boundless And the choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation."

"Error is a hardy plant; it flourisheth in every soil; In the heart of the wise and good, alike with the wicked and foolish; For there is no error so crooked, but it hath in it some lines of truth; Nor is any poison so deadly, that it serveth not some wholesome use."

"The universe according to Bohm actually has two faces, or more precisely, two orders. One is the explicate order, corresponding to the physical world as we know it in day-to-day reality, the other a deeper, more fundamental order which Bohm calls the implicate order. The implicate order is the vast holomovement. We see only the surface of this movement as it presents or "explicates" itself from moment to moment in time and space. What we see in the world — the explicate order — is no more than the surface of the implicate order as it unfolds. Time and space are themselves the modes or forms of the unfolding process. They are like the screen on the video game. The displays on the screen may seem to interact directly with each other but, in fact, their interaction merely reflects what the game computer is doing. The rules which govern the operation of the computer are, of course, different from those that govern the behavior of the figures displayed on the screen. Moreover, like the implicate order of Bohm's model, the computer might be capable of many operations that in no way apparent upon examination of the game itself as it progresses on the screen."

"According to Bohm, the ground of the cosmos is not elementary particles but pure process, a flowing movement of the whole. Within this implicate order, Bohm believed, one could resolve the Cartesian split between mind and matter, or between brain and consciousness."

"Dave always arrives at the right conclusions, but his mathematics is terrible. I take it home and find all sorts of errors and then have to spend the night trying to develop the correct proof. But in the end, the result is always exactly the same as the one Dave saw directly."

"I can tell you one thing. David Bohm knows a lot more than just a little about physics."