Academics From The United States

"It’s a tectonic shift [the decline of an empire and the rise of another one]. Let’s look at this from Russia’s point of view. This is everything that Russia has been aiming at and insisting upon for the last five years. President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov have been leading the understanding that the world needs to be de-dollarized, that the United States has declared an economic war against Russia, China and their allies, really against Eurasia. So, in effect, by drawing the sanctions — not only the sanctions — but the most important thing is by seizing Russia’s foreign holdings in the United States, its treasury bond holdings and the bank deposits."

"As President Biden explained, the current U.S.-orchestrated military escalation (“Prodding the Bear”) is not really about Ukraine. Biden promised at the outset that no U.S. troops would be involved. But he has been demanding for over a year that Germany prevent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from supplying its industry and housing with low-priced gas and turn to the much higher-priced U.S. suppliers.... So the most pressing U.S. strategic aim of NATO confrontation with Russia is soaring oil and gas prices, above all to the detriment of Germany. In addition to creating profits and stock-market gains for U.S. oil companies, higher energy prices will take much of the steam out of the German economy."

"There was actually no liquidity crisis whatsoever... the reason that the regular newspapers don't report it is the loans violated every element of the Dodd-Frank laws that were supposed to prevent the Fed from making loans to particular banks that were not part of a liquidity crisis... these three banks, Chase Manhattan, Goldman Sachs – which used to be a brokerage firm – and Citibank, that the Federal Reserve laws and the Dodd-Frank Act explicitly prevent the Fed from making loans to particular banks... month after month, the Fed was pumping money into JP Morgan and Citibank and Goldman... these really weren't Citibank and Morgan Chase; it was to their trading affiliates. Now this is exactly what Dodd-Frank was supposed to prevent..."

"When Biden gave his speech last week, there was a very marked change, right in the middle of it. The very beginning was very calm, offering means of improvement for the American economy, and a set of proposals that were so wonderful that they don’t have the chance of being enacted. And that was simply to co-opt what calls itself the left wing of the Democratic Party, if that’s not an oxymoron. And when all of a sudden, his body language changed, his voice changed, and there was just an anger towards Russia and towards China, a visceral anger that brought back the whole 30 years of his tenure in Congress... he’s escalating the cold war against Russia and China, in the belief that somehow if he can impose sanctions and punish them economically, that will lead to a fall of the government. Well, you can see what he’s projecting here."

"It is worthwhile to note that our global imposition of the mythical “efficiencies” of forcing Latin American countries to become plantations for export crops like coffee and bananas rather than growing their own wheat and corn has failed catastrophically to deliver better lives, especially...in Central America.... witness the caravans and refugees across Mexico. Of course, our backing of the most brutal military dictators and crime lords has not helped either. Likewise, the IMF has been forced to admit that its basic guidelines were fictitious from the beginning...It is as if the IMF now operates out of a small room in the basement of the Pentagon in Washington... It’s now out in the open..."

"The Neocons who Trump has appointed are accomplishing what seemed unthinkable not long ago: Driving China and Russia together... After the crescendo of pretenses and deceptions over Iraq, Libya and Syria, along with our absolution of the lawless regime of Saudi Arabia, foreign political leaders are coming to recognize what world-wide public opinion polls reported even before the Iraq/Iran-Contra boys turned their attention to the world’s largest oil reserves in Venezuela: The United States is now the greatest threat to peace on the planet."

"The Deep State is reacting with shock at how this right-wing real estate grifter has been able to drive other countries to defend themselves by dismantling the U.S.-centered world order. To rub it in, he is using Bush and Reagan-era Neocon arsonists, John Bolton and now Elliott Abrams, to fan the flames in Venezuela. It is almost like a black political comedy. The world of international diplomacy is being turned inside-out. A world where there is no longer even a pretense that we might adhere to international norms, let alone laws or treaties."

"The end of America’s unchallenged global economic dominance has arrived sooner than expected, thanks to the very same Neocons who gave the world the Iraq, Syria and the dirty wars in Latin America... The United State['s]... violent regime change warfare against Venezuela and Syria – and threatening other countries with sanctions if they do not join this crusade – is driving European and other nations to create their alternative financial institutions...."

"The job of the Federal Reserve is to increase the price of wealth and stocks and real estate relative to labor. The Federal Reserve is sort of waging class war. It wants to increase the assets of the 1 percent relative to the earnings of the 99 percent, and we’re seeing the fact that this, the effect of this class war is so successful it’s plunged the economy into debt, slowed the economy, and led to the crisis we have today."

"Well, companies themselves have been causing this crisis as much as speculators, because companies like Amazon, like Google, or Apple especially, have been borrowing money to buy their own stock. Corporate activists, stockholder activists, have told these companies, we want you to put us on the board because we want you to borrow at 1 percent to buy your stock yielding 5 percent. You’ll get rich in no time. So these stock buybacks by Apple and by other companies at high prices can push up their stock price in the short term. But when prices crash, their net worth is all of a sudden plunging... this morning in the stock market was a huge wipeout of borrowed money on which people thought the market would go up, and the Federal Reserve would be able to inflate prices."

"You could say that GDP (National Income) and prosperity and wealth grows fastest when income tax rates are highest. And wealth slows, the economy slows, when taxes are cut. That's counter intuitive but if you look at any chart comparing tax rates and economic growth rates that's what you find. The 19th century knew it, the 18th century knew it but today you have a kind of counter revolution of junk economics that is basically anti-labor economics."

"if you increase living standards you make labor more productive. This is why Asia today is becoming more productive than the United States."

"To the deficit commission, a depression is the solution to the problem, not a problem."

"If you look at the speeches he gave just before he left the Fed, it's pretty much “After me - the Deluge. I'm getting out while my reputation's intact”."

"I suppose that I should say a few words with respect to the possibility for future production and identification of additional transuranium elements, especially in view of the possibility of their production by heavy-ion bombardment of transuranium elements. As an aid to such a program the radioactive properties can be estimated, as I have already indicated, on the assumption of a smooth nuclear energy surface and the systematics of radioactivity. Again, I must emphasize that such considerations are negated in the event that a stable subshell of 148 neutrons should be found to exist, and this must be regarded as a definite possibility. It is interesting to note that our considerations on the systematics of spontaneous fission28 indicate that this method of decay will not compete seriously with radioactive decay until the region just beyond element 100. … These considerations illustrate clearly that one of the problems is that of conceiving means for producing nuclides of sufficiently high mass numbers with half-lives long enough for chemical identification. Thus, the serious problem is again the paucity of starting materials."

"The one sure mark of a con, though, is the promise of free money."

"Dr. Seaborg was a true giant of the 20th Century, a legend in the annals of scientific discovery. His daily commitment to matters of the laboratory, even in retirement as associate director-at-large and as an active researcher, was an inspiration to us all. … We who have been touched by his wisdom, his energy, and his tireless devotion to our profession will miss him."

"Glenn Seaborg had a tremendous influence on me — both before and after I met him. Of course, as a nuclear chemist, I knew of his leadership in the legendary discovery of plutonium in 1941, the development of the actinide concept, his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1951, and the discovery of 8 more transplutonium elements by 1958. It was not until his tenure as chairman of the AEC (1961-71) that I actually began to learn first hand about the "real" person behind these awesome accomplishments. … The breadth of his interests, his skill in communicating with both scientists and the general public and press, and his energy in doing all this even while he was AEC chairman still boggles my mind! … I learned so many things from him just by observing how he ran the weekly brown bag lunches with his graduate students and later mine — listening with great interest as they described their research progress. He asked insightful and penetrating questions, but not in a threatening manner, made suggestions, and frequently went to visit the labs late in the day to see what was going on. He also hosted many undergraduate research students. He was devoted to education and student training and would prepare as carefully for lectures to freshman chemistry classes as for presentations to prestigious assemblages of scientists. Glenn was very concerned with history and had kept a diary or journal since he was eight years old. After his return to Berkeley from Washington in 1971, he continued the tremendous undertaking of putting them into book form, which occupied him and several helpers for many years. His journals also formed the basis for books on his years as chancellor at Berkeley, as chairman of the AEC, and many other topics. On the rare occasions that he did not remember something that one of us might ask about he would look it up in his journals. He had a fabulous memory and was able to synthesize and apply and keep track of what he knew so it could be applied to the situation at hand. One might almost say in the parlance of our time that he was a "parallel processor"! … In spite of his legendary accomplishments, Glenn Seaborg always had time for family members, colleagues, students, and even non-scientists who wanted to visit with him. We have lost a treasured advisor, colleague, mentor, resource, and friend. But he will live on through his prolific writings and in the cherished memories of the hosts of students, scientists, colleagues, and lay people that he influenced."

"The body of information assembled in Dr. Seaborg's laboratory has made it possible to predict the radioactive characteristics of many isotopes of elements still to be found. Under Dr. Seaborg's leadership, also, whole new bodies of methodology and instrumentation have been developed and have become a cornerstone of modern nuclear chemistry."

"To say that Seaborg had a high-profile career is an understatement. He is in the Guiness Book of World Records for having the longest entry in "Who's Who in America." … In 1944, Seaborg formulated the 'actinide concept' of heavy element electronic structure which predicted that the actinides – including the first eleven transuranium elements – would form a transition series analogous to the rare earth series of lanthanide elements. Called one of the most significant changes in the periodic table since Mendeleev's 19th century design, the actinide concept showed how the transuranium elements fit into the periodic table."

"Even the simplest calculation in the purest mathematics can have terrible consequences. Without the invention of the infinitesimal calculus most of our technology would have been impossible. Should we say therefore that calculus is bad?"

"When this wizard stepped down from his post, crossed his moat, and opened his garden gate, nothing could be more attractive than the vistas and plantations he opened to our view. … Few men could suggest more while saying so little, or stimulate so much while communicating next to nothing that was tangible and comprehensible. The young man that would learn the true meaning of apprehension as distinct from comprehension, should have heard the professor lecture..."

"It is not given to us — it is given to but few men of any generation — to roam those Alpine solitudes of science to which his genius reached."

"Benjamin Peirce deserves recognition, not only as a founding father of American mathematics, but also as a founding father of modern abstract algebra."

"Looking back over the space of fifty years since I entered Harvard College, Benjamin Peirce still impresses me as having the most massive intellect with which I have ever come in contact, and as being the most profoundly inspiring teacher I ever had. … As soon as he had finished the problem or filled the blackboard he would rub everything out and begin again. He was impatient of detail, and sometimes the result would not come out right; but instead of going over his work to find the error, he would rub it out, saying that he had made a mistake in a sign somewhere, and that we should find it when we went over our notes. Described in this way it may seem strange that such a method of teaching should be inspiring; yet to us it was so to the highest degree. We were carried along by the rush of his thought, by the ease and grasp of his intellectual movement. The inspiration came, I think, partly from his treating us as highly competent pupils, capable of following his line of thought even through errors in transformations; partly from his rapid and graceful methods of proof, which reached a result with the least number of steps in the process, attaining thereby an artistic or literary character; and partly from the quality of his mind which tended to regard any mathematical theorem as a particular case of some more comprehensive one, so that we were led onward to constantly enlarging truths."

"He gave us his "Curves and Functions", in the form of lectures; and sometimes, even while stating his propositions, he would be seized with some mathematical inspiration, would forget pupils, notes, everything, and would rapidly dash off equation after equation, following them out with smaller and smaller chalk-marks into the remote corners of the blackboard, forsaking his delightful task only when there was literally no more space to be covered, and coming back with a sigh to his actual students. There was a great fascination about these interruptions; we were present, as it seemed, at mathematics in the making; it was like peeping into a necromancer's cell, and seeing him at work; or as if our teacher were one of the old Arabian algebraists recalled to life."

"His talk was informal, often far above their heads. "Do you follow me?" asked the Professor one day. No one could say Yes. "I'm not surprised," said he; "I know of only three persons who could." At Paris, the year after, at the great Exposition, Flagg stood before a mural tablet whereon were inscribed the names of the great mathematicians of the earth for more than two thousand years. Archimedes headed, Peirce closed the list; the only American."

"Authority was nothing to Peirce. He took his own path up the mountain. … Like Pythagoras, Peirce taught that everything owes its existence and consistency to the harmony which he considered the basis of all beauty, and found music in the revolving spheres."

"Of the great mathematician as an instructor several of his pupils who ventured on the higher planes of the science have written. These were youths who, though they could follow him but a few steps in that rarefied atmosphere, had the privilege of a glimpse now and then into shining infinities wherein this giant sped rejoicing on."

"He was such a great, big ray of Light and Goodness, always so simple, cheerful and showing more than amiability, that his great power did not seem to assert itself."

"Benjamin Peirce's lectures dealt, to be sure, with the higher mathematics, but also with theories of the universe and the infinities of nature, and with man's power to deal with infinities and infinitesimals alike. His University Lectures were many a time way over the heads of his audience, but his aspect, his manner, and his whole personality held and delighted them."

"Peirce stood alone — a mountain peak whose absolute height might be hard to measure, but which towered above the surrounding country."

"He was one of the most stimulating men I have ever known."

"I always had the feeling that his attitude toward his loved science was that of a devoted worshipper, rather than a clear expounder. Although we could rarely follow him, we certainly sat up and took notice. … To him mathematics was not a humanly devised instrument of investigation, it was Philosophy itself, the divine revealer of TRUTH."

"There are many cases of these algebras which may obviously be combined into natural classes, but the consideration of this portion of the subject will be reserved to subsequent researches."

"All relations are either qualitative or quantitative. Qualitative relations can be considered by themselves without regard to quantity. The algebra of such enquiries may be called logical algebra, of which a fine example is given by Boole. Quantitative relations may also be considered by themselves without regard to quality. They belong to arithmetic, and the corresponding algebra is the common or arithmetical algebra. In all other algebras both relations must be combined, and the algebra must conform to the character of the relations."

"The branches of mathematics are as various as the sciences to which they belong, and each subject of physical enquiry has its appropriate mathematics. In every form of material manifestation, there is a corresponding form of human thought, so that the human mind is as wide in its range of thought as the physical universe in which it thinks."

"The sphere of mathematics is here extended, in accordance with the derivation of its name, to all demonstrative research, so as to include all knowledge strictly capable of dogmatic teaching. Mathematics is not the discoverer of laws, for it is not induction; neither is it the framer of theories, for it is not hypothesis; but it is the judge over both, and it is the arbiter to which each must refer its claims ; and neither law can rule nor theory explain without the sanction of mathematics. It deduces from a law all its consequences, and develops them into the suitable form for comparison with observation, and thereby measures the strength of the argument from observation in favor of a proposed law or of a proposed form of application of a law. Mathematics, under this definition, belongs to every enquiry, moral as well as physical. Even the rules of logic, by which it is rigidly bound, could not be deduced without its aid. The laws of argument admit of simple statement, but they must be curiously transposed before they can be applied to the living speech and verified by, observation."

"Mathematics is the science which draws necessary conclusions."

"I presume that to the uninitiated the formulae will appear cold and cheerless; but let it be remembered that, like other mathematical formulae, they find their origin in the divine source of all geometry. Whether I shall have the satisfaction of taking part in their exposition, or whether that will remain for some more profound expositor, will be seen in the future."

"The strongest use of the symbol is to be found in its magical power of doubling the actual universe, and placing by its side an ideal universe, its exact counterpart, with which it can be compared and contrasted, and, by means of curiously connecting fibres, form with it an organic whole, from which modern analysis has developed her surpassing geometry."

"The familiar proposition that all A is B, and all B is C, and therefore all A is C, is contracted in its domain by the substitution of significant words for the symbolic letters. The A, B, and C, are subject to no limitation for the purposes and validity of the proposition; they may represent not merely the actual, but also the ideal, the impossible as well as the possible. In Algebra, likewise, the letters are symbols which, passed through a machinery of argument in accordance with given laws, are developed into symbolic results under the name of formulas. When the formulas admit of intelligible interpretation, they are accessions to knowledge; but independently of their interpretation they are invaluable as symbolical expressions of thought. But the most noted instance is the symbol called the impossible or imaginary, known also as the square root of minus one, and which, from a shadow of meaning attached to it, may be more definitely distinguished as the symbol of semi-inversion. This symbol is restricted to a precise signification as the representative of perpendicularity in quaternions, and this wonderful algebra of space is intimately dependent upon the special use of the symbol for its symmetry, elegance, and power."

"Some definite interpretation of a linear algebra would, at first sight, appear indispensable to its successful application. But on the contrary, it is a singular fact, and one quite consonant with the principles of sound logic, that its first and general use is mostly to be expected from its want of significance. The interpretation is a trammel to the use. Symbols are essential to comprehensive argument."

"There is proof enough furnished by every science, but by none more than geometry, that the world to which we have been allotted is peculiarly adapted to our minds, and admirably fitted to promote our intellectual progress. There can be no reasonable doubt that it was part of the Creator's plan. How easily might the whole order have been transposed! How readily might we have been assigned to some complicated system which our feeble and finite powers could not have unravelled!"

"The very spirits of the winds, when they were sent to carry the grateful harvest to the thirsting fields of Calabria, did not forget the geometry which they had studied in the caverns of Æolus and of which the geologist is daily discovering the diagrams."

"Throughout nature the omnipresent beautiful revealed an all-pervading language spoken to the human mind, and to man's highest capacity of comprehension. By whom was it spoken? Whether by the gods of the ocean, or the land, by the ruling divinities of the sun, moon, and stars, or by the dryads of the forest and the nymphs of the fountain, it was one speech and its written cipher was cabalistic. The cabala were those of number, and even if they transcended the gemetricl skill of the Rabbi and the hieroglyphical learning of the priest of Osiris, they were, distinctly and unmistakably, expressions of thought uttered to mind by mind; they were the solutions of mathematical problems of extraordinary complexity."

"Descend from the infinite to the infinitesimal. Long before . . . observation had begun to penetrate the veil under which Nature has hidden her mysteries, the restless mind sought some principle of power strong enough and of sufficient variety to collect and bind together all parts of a world. This seemed to be found, where one might least expect it, in abstract numbers. Everywhere the exactest numerical proportion was seen to constitute the spiritual element of the highest beauty."

"Ascend with me above the dust, above the cloud, to the realms of the higher geometry, where the heavens are never clouded; where there is no impure vapour, and no delusive or imperfect observation, where the new truths are already arisen, while they are yet dimly dawning on the world below; where the earth is a little planet; where the sun has dwindled to a star; where all the stars are lost in the Milky Way to which they belong; where the Milky Way is seen floating through space like any other nebula; where the whole great girdle of nebulae has diminished to an atom and has become as readily and completely submissive to the pen of the geometer, and the slave of his formula, as the single drop, which falls from the clouds, instinct with all the forces of the material world."

"The Key! it is of wonderful construction, with its infinity of combination, and its unlimited capacity to fit every lock. … it is the great master-key which unlocks every door of knowledge and without which no discovery which deserves the name — which is law, and not isolated fact — has been or ever can be made. Fascinated by its symmetry the geometer may at times have been too exclusively engrossed with his science, forgetful of its applications; he may have exalted it into his idol and worshipped it; he may have degraded it into his toy . . . when he should have been hard at work with it, using it for the benefit of mankind and the glory of his Creator."

"Geometry, to which I have devoted my life, is honoured with the title of the Key of Sciences; but it is the Key of an ever open door which refuses to be shut, and through which the whole world is crowding, to make free, in unrestrained license, with the precious treasures within, thoughtless both of lock and key, of the door itself, and even of Science, to which it owes such boundless possessions, the New World included. The door is wide open and all may enter, but all do not enter with equal thoughtlessness. There are a few who wonder, as they approach, at the exhaustless wealth, as the sacred shepherd wondered at the burning bush of Horeb, which was ever burning and never consumed. Casting their shoes from off their feet and the world's iron-shod doubts from their understanding, these children of the faithful take their first step upon the holy ground with reverential awe, and advance almost with timidity, fearful, as the signs of Deity break upon them, lest they be brought face to face with the Almighty."