Category Archives: truth

>Stephen Leahy

>

Famine-hollowed farmers watch trucks loaded with grain grown on their ancestral lands heading for the nearest port, destined to fill richer bellies in foreign lands. This scene has become all too common since the 2008 food crisis.
Food prices are even higher now in many countries, sparking another cycle of hunger riots in the Middle East and South Asia last weekend. While bad weather gets the blame for rising prices, the instant price hikes of recent times are largely due to market speculation in a corrupt global food system.
When South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics tried to buy 1.3 million hectares, or one-third, of Madagascar’s farmland in 2008, violent protests erupted and the government was toppled. South Korea still has at least a million hectares in long-term leases elsewhere and China 2.1 million ha, mainly in Southeast Asia.
Some of the leases are for 99 years at a one dollar a hectare, but local people are not eligible for the deals being promoted in countries where millions of people remain dependent on food aid.

>Ben Bernanke

>

Clearly what’s happening is not a dollar effect, it’s a growth effect.
It’s entirely unfair to attribute excess demand issues in emering markets to US monetary policy.

>Michael Pento

>

From all accounts, it appears the world is in the early stages of a major leg up in food prices. The major macroeconomic trend will likely drive economic policy and the investment outlook for years to come. Although mainstream pundits like to focus on such cyclical drivers as the weather, the real force behind the move is secular. The U.S. is leading the world in a pandemic of monetary inflation that is helping to cause commodity prices, food in particular, to skyrocket across the globe.

>Pranab Mukherjee

>

Just yesterday I said that these types of fluctuations take place, sometimes weekly fluctuations, sometimes monthly fluctuations. Price rise is always, particularly of the essential commodities and food, a matter of grave concern.

>Paul Krugman

>

While several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the kind of thing we’d expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse gases change our climate — which means that the current food price surge may be just the beginning.

>Mark Twain

>

Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt and live like it’s heaven on Earth.
Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.

>Judah Cohen

>

The earth continues to get warmer, yet it’s feeling a lot colder outside. Over the past few weeks, subzero temperatures in Poland claimed 66 lives; snow arrived in Seattle well before the winter solstice, and fell heavily enough in Minneapolis to make the roof of the Metrodome collapse; and last week blizzards closed Europe’s busiest airports in London and Frankfurt for days, stranding holiday travelers. The snow and record cold have invaded the Eastern United States, with more bad weather predicted.
All of this cold was met with perfect comic timing by the release of a World Meteorological Organization report showing that 2010 will probably be among the three warmest years on record, and 2001 through 2010 the warmest decade on record.
How can we reconcile this? The not-so-obvious short answer is that the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes. Last winter, too, was exceptionally snowy and cold across the Eastern United States and Eurasia, as were seven of the previous nine winters.

>Roger Cohen

>

At this point it is clear enough who invaded Iraq. Contrary to general opinion, it was Iran. After all, applying the Roman principle of cui bono — “to whose benefit?” — there can be no question that Iran, the greatest beneficiary of the ousting of its enemy Saddam Hussein and the rise to power of Shiites in Baghdad, must have done it.
I know it appears that the United States was behind the invasion. What about “shock and awe” and all that? Hah! It is true that the deception was elaborate. But consider the facts: The invasion of Iraq has weakened the United States, Iran’s old enemy, and so it can only be — quod erat demonstrandum — that Tehran was the devious mastermind.

>Jose Luis Marroquin

>

There is … a basic issue that is only very seldomly discuscussed: What do we mean by “visual experience”? Very often the problem of vision is oversimplified, and to “see” a scene is identified with the task of computing a verbal description of it. This problem is difficult enough, but it is important to recognize that there is much more in visual perception than assigning verbal labels to “objects”.
If we pay attention to what we actually see, instead of thinking about it, we find that our visual experience is richer than any verbal description. This fact becomes evident as we observe a pictoric representation of a landscape – i.e., a non-verbal description – and compare the visual image with a literary description of the same scene or, further, with a list of the “objects” it contains. Moreover, we all recognize that certain visual patterns have qualities such as simplicity, elegance, unity, beauty, harmony, etc., but all these words denote experiences which are almost impossible to be described verbally, and which cannot be explained by a theory which considers visual perception merely as the assignment of verbal labels.

>松岡正剛

>

ブッタもイエスも、親鸞も世阿弥も、ケプラーも古田織部も、 みんな異質のかたまりで、例外者だったんです。それが、のちのち衣鉢が継承され、 評価されるうちに、 偉人になっていっただけです。 でも、ほんとうは偉人ではなくて、異人だったんです。

>Robin Marantz Henig

>

Today’s federal effort to develop an efficient machine for credibility assessment has been compared to the Manhattan Project, the secret government undertaking to build the atomic bomb. This sounds hyperbolic, to compare a high-tech lie detector to a weapon of mass destruction, but Tom Zeffiro, who made the analogy, said that they raise similar moral quandaries, especially for the scientists doing the research. If a truly efficient lie detector could be developed, he said, we might find ourselves living in “a fundamentally different world than the one we live in today.”

>Martin Gardner

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Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals – the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all.

>Henry Chadwick

>

The conversion of Constantine marks a turning-point in the history of the Church and of Europe. It meant much more than the end of persecution. The sovereign autocrat was inevitably and immediately involved in the development of the church, and conversely the Church became more and more implicated in high political decisions. It is characteristic that the Western attitude towards the conversion of Constantine and its consequences has generally been more ambivalent than the Eastern. In the West there has been a sharper consciousness of the double-sidedness of his benefits to the Church. But if his conversion should not be interpreted as an inward experience of grace, neither was it a cynical act of Machiavellian cunning. It was a military matter. His comprehension of Christian doctrine was never very clear, but he was sure that victory in battle lay in the gift of the God of the Christians.

>Antoine Danchin

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Il est de moins en moins habituel aujourd’hui d’imaginer le savant-technicien isolé dans sa tour d’ivoire et ne faisant que très rarement part du contenu de ce savoir ou des modes de sa production à la communauté des ses contemporains. Beaucoup de chercheurs sont sollicités par la pression médiatique, et pensent souvent à soigner leur image plutôt que le contenu de l’information qu’ils souhaitent transmettre. On a ainsi souvent, malgré de très brillants exemples opposés, l’impression qu’un bon vulgarisateur doit être un mauvais savant. Par ailleurs, l’envahissement certain de la culture anglo-américaine tend à privilégier les faits par rapport à la réflexion, comme si ces faits existaient en eux-mêmes. Ainsi, la réflexion sur la Science se trouve éliminée comme une obscénité avec pour corollaire la spécialisation : on admet qu’il existe alors des épistémologues – et il existe des prés carrés maintenus par des titres sans contenu, mais jamais, au grand jamais, un expérimentateur ne peut-il se permettre ce type de réflexion sur la science qu’il produit (et qu’il met ainsi en cause). Bien sûr, la tendance inverse existe aussi parfois. Elle est utilisée par certains chercheurs pour asseoir leur autorité par une utilisation plus ou moins habile des moyens de communication à grande diffusion. Le vedettariat existe aussi en Science…

>Brian Wilson Aldiss

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When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them, they show us the state of our decay.

>Richard E. Cytowic

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Science, like the world of fashion, has fashions. Some ideas and theories enjoy enormous interest for a while and then fade from view. Physiognomy, the “science” of extracting character from facial features was enormously, and erroneously, influential in the nineteenth century. Lavater’s book on the subject sold hugely for its day, and so influential was it that Darwin was nearly refused a berth on The Beagle because his nose was too long. One might not be surprised that such ideas are popular for only a short time; more curiously, some of the very phenomenology upon which science depends has also been shown to appear and then disappear like Alice’s cat. …
Synesthesia is another neurological abnormality that has been in and out of fashion. First described by Locke in 1690 and medically by Woolhouse twenty years later, it was the subject of much scientific interest a hundred years ago. By 1940s, however, it had virtually disappeared from the collective scientific and medical consciousness. …

>Henri Poincaré

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Le savant n’étudie pas la nature parce que cela est utile ; il l’étudie parce qu’il y prend plaisir et il y prend plaisir parce qu’elle est belle. Si la nature n’était pas belle, elle ne vaudrait pas la peine d’être connue, la vie ne vaudrait pas la peine d’être vécue. Je ne parle pas ici, bien entendu, de cette beauté qui frappe les sens, de la beauté des qualités et des apparences ; non que j’en fasse fi, loin de là, mais elle n’a rien à faire avec la science ; je veux parler de cette beauté plus intime qui vient de l’ordre harmonieux des parties, et qu’une intelligence pure peut saisir.

>René Dubos

>

The progress of science depends less than is usually believed on the efforts and performance of the individual genius … many important discoveries have been made by men of ordinary talents, simply because chance had made them, at the proper time and in the proper place and circumstances, recipients of a body of doctrines, facts and techniques that rendered almost inevitable the recognition of an important phenomenon. It is surprising that some historian has not taken malicious pleasure in writing an anthology of ‘one discovery’ scientists. Many exciting facts have been discovered as a result of loose thinking and unimaginative experimentation, and described in wrappings of empty words. One great discovery does not betoken a great scientist; science now and then selects insignificant standard bearers to display its banners.

>Ian Hacking

>

Throughout the Age of Reason, chance had been called the superstition of the vulgar. Chance, superstition, vulgarity, unreason were of one piece. The rational man, averting his eyes from such things, could cover chaos with a veil of inexorable laws. The world, it was said, might often look haphazard, but only because we do not know the inevitable workings of its inner springs. As for probabilities — whose mathematics was called the doctrine of chances — they were merely the defective but necessary tools of people who know too little.
There were plenty of sceptics about determinism in those days: those who needed room for freedom of the will, or those who insisted on the individual character of organic and living processes. None of these thought for a moment that laws of chance would provide an alternative to strictly causal laws. Yet by 1900 that was a real possibility, urged as fact by an adventurous few. The stage was set for ultimate indeterminism. How did that happen?

>久保有政

>

無神論は、古代ギリシャの昔から、しばしば思想家たちの間に見られるものでした。しかし現代における無神論は、その影響を与える範囲の広さにおいて、過去のものとは比べものになりません。
近代から現代にかけて、無神論は強固な哲学的・論理的基盤を持つようになりました。
そしてそれは、もはや一部の哲学者の間だけでなく、一般大衆の知性と心情に浸透し、今や大人から子供に至るまで、世界中の多くの人々の世界観や人生観を形成してきたのです。
人が無神論をとるか、あるいは創造者なる神を信じるかという問題は、その人の世界観・人生観に関わる重要な問題であり、ゆくゆくはその人の人生を大きく左右します。
「人生は無意味だ」「世界はばかげている」という考えになってしまうのは、そもそもその考えの出発点となったものが間違っているからです。無神論からは、何ら良いものは出てきません。
神はおられます。天地万物を造られた神を信じ、神と共に生き始めるならば、人生の意味や目的は自然に開かれてきます。人生の目的を知って生きるのと、そうでないのとでは、天と地ほどの開きがあります。
神はあなたを愛しておられます。神の愛の中にいない人は、誰一人いません。神はすべての人が真理を知り、幸福な人生を送ることを願っておられます。しかし、神がお与えになる幸福を享受するのを妨げているものがあります。それは神を否定する心です。神を認めない心こそ、じつは人間最大の罪なのです。

>新名丈夫

>

勝利か滅亡か、戦局は茲まで来た
国家存亡の岐路に立つの事態が、開戦以来2年2ケ月、緒戦の赫々たるわが進攻に対する敵の盛り返しにより、勝利か滅亡かの現実とならんとしつつあるのだ。大東亜戦争は太平洋戦争であり、海洋戦である。われらの最大の敵は太平洋より来寇しつつあるのだ。海洋戦の攻防は海上において決せられることはいうまでもない。しかも太平洋の攻防の決戦は日本の本土沿岸において決せられるものではなくして、数千海里を隔てた基地の争奪をめぐって戦われるのである。本土沿岸に敵が侵攻し来るにおいては最早万事休すである。
竹槍では間に合わぬ 飛行機だ 海洋航空機だ
今こそわれらは戦勢の実相を直視しなけれぱならない。戦争は果たして勝っているか。ガダルカナル以来、過去1年半余、わが忠勇なる陸海将士の血戦死闘にもかかわらず、太平洋の戦線は次第に後退の一路を辿り来った血涙の事実をわれわれは深省しなけれぱならない。
空中戦闘と海上の艦隊決戦において、如何に勝利を獲得するとも、海上補給に際して敵航空機の網に罹っては補給はできないのである。敵航空機の海上補給攻撃に対してこれを防衛するには、わが航空兵力をもって対抗するほかなきは勿論である。
太平洋の攻防ともに航空兵力こそ勝敗の鍵を握るものなのである。敵の戦法に対してわれらの戦法を対抗せしめなければならない。敵が飛行機で攻めに来るのに、竹槍をもっては戦い得ないのだ。問題は戦力の結集である。帝国の存亡を決するものは、わが海洋航空兵力の飛躍増強に対するわが戦力の結集如何にかかって存するのではないか。

>Tristan Garcia

>

La philosophie est peut-être plus importante pour moi que la littérature. J’aimerais vraiment écrire une œuvre philosophique, J’aime l’idée classique métaphysique, tenir un discours sur le monde qui échappe à l’expérience sensible. Ca me semble important parce que par moments, la philo est la seule chose qui peut aller sur le terrain de la religiosité, tenir un discours rationnel et pas un discours de croyance. Je laisse traîner depuis quelques années un traité de métaphysique comme on en faisait au XVIIIe siècle, sur la représentation du monde. Il me faudra encore deux ou trois ans pour le finir, mais ça sortira un jour. En espérant qu’on dissocie mes deux activités, parce qu’à moins d’être Rousseau ou Sartre, les romanciers-philosophes ont souvent donné des catastrophes.

>Jerry A. Coyne

>

Now, science cannot completely exclude the possibility of supernatural explanation. It is possible–though very unlikely–that our whole world is controlled by elves. But supernatural explanations like these are simply never needed: we manage to understand the natural world just fine using reason and materialism. Furthermore, supernatural explanations always mean the end of inquiry: that’s the way God wants it, end of story. Science, on the other hand, is never satisfied: our studies of the universe will continue until humans go extinct.

>Jhumpa Lahiri

>I can’t tell you exactly how I found it. It was just a process of writing a lot of stories and reading a lot of stories that I admired and just working and working until the sentences sounded right and I was satisfied with them.

>Rod Smyth

>

The Federal Reserve (Fed) is on the side of the stock investor and ultimately if Fed is successful, the thing they are buying, bonds, will suffer the most.
You believe the Fed cannot prevent deflation and that we’re going into deflation, that is the only reason you hold bonds.
If you believe that the Fed can’t generate growth, but they can prevent deflation, then the choice becomes easy—which is that stocks are yielding as much as bonds.
A global portfolio of stocks is as good a bet against bonds as it has been in 40 to 50 years.

>司馬遼太郎

>

日本人は均一性を欲する。大多数がやっていることが神聖であり、同時に脅迫である。
人間は、自然によって生かされてきた。古代でも中世でも自然こそ神々であるとした。
このことは、少しも誤っていないのである。
人間は決して、孤立して生きられるようには、作られていない。
勇気と決断と、行動力さえもちあわせておれば、あとのことは天に任せればよい。
いわば日本じゅうが、“普請中”という落ちつかない家の中に住んでいる。
このため、秩序ある美しさにあこがれる若い娘たちは、安定期をむかえた—たとえば国内では京都や津和野のような—よその家をのぞきこみする旅をよろこぶ。彼女たちのヨーロッパ旅行も、基本的にはそういう心理にちがいない。

>Blaise Pascal

>

Il est dangereux de dire au peuple que les lois ne sont pas justes, car il n’y obéit qu’à cause qu’il les croit justes. C’est pourquoi il lui faut dire en même temps qu’il y faut obéir parce qu’elles sont lois, comme il faut obéir aux supérieurs non pas parce qu’ils sont justes, mais parce qu’ils sont supérieurs. Par là voilà toute sédition prévenue, si on peut faire entendre cela et que proprement c’est la définition de la justice.

>Steven Hawking

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Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.

>Kevin Theriot

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Renowned physicist, Steven Hawking, is reportedly releasing a new book that concludes “God did not create the universe, and the Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics.” …
Apparently, Hawking’s book is written to counter Sir Isaac Newton’s conclusion that God must have designed the universe, because even cursory observation of the complexity of nature indicates it could not have randomly resulted from chaos. This is a biblical concept. ”For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” Romans 1:21.
Prof. Hawking is a brilliant man, but that doesn’t make him wise. The Bible speaks to that too: “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.” And more directly to the point, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Psalm 14:1.
At bottom, attempts to explain the origin of the universe based on man’s wisdom are the height of hubris. It reminds me of the story my father, a retired Baptist preacher, used to tell from the pulpit. It went something like this. A group of scientists decided to challenge God to a creation contest. The rules were simple – each side gets one gallon of dust, and from it they have to create a living organism. God accepted the challenge on one condition: the scientists had to make their own dust.
Try as they might, men (even brilliant ones like Hawking) cannot get past the conundrum of how to create something from nothing. Only God can do that.

日高敏隆

それぞれの種の1つ1つの個体が自分自身の子孫を殖やしていこうとするので、それは当然シェア争いになる。なぜならその種が生きていける条件をそなえた場所は限られているからである。だとすると、自然はこのような果てしないシェア争いの場であって、けっして調和のとれた場所ではない。 。。。 しかしそこには、強弱の問題や、競争コストの問題があるから、一定のところで妥協点に達せざるを得ない。この妥協した状態をわれわれが外から見ると、それは一つの「調和」のようにみえる。

自然が果てしない競争と闘いの場であるなら、「自然にやさしく」というとき、いったいそのどれにやさしくしたらよいのだろうか?どれかにやさしくすれば、その相手には冷たくしていることになる。

>Daniel Decot

>

Un bimoteur allemand s’écrasa de nuit, près d’Issanlas, le 23 juin 1944. Décrit par les témoins, il pourrait s’agir d’un Dornier 217, d’autant que parmi les débris éparpillés, on retrouva une torpille et un canot pneumatique. Or, des Dornier 217 furent affectés à l’attaque des convois maritimes alliés en Méditerranée. L’équipage de quatre hommes se parachuta-t-il avant l’écrasement de l’appareil? car aucun corps ne fut retrouvé.

>ポー老師

>

The world you live in is mysterious, exciting, unknown and mine is older, familiar, and calm. You will never know my world not I yours. . . . Can you see with my eyes? Think with my brain?
We are one, yet we are not the same.
Do not see yourself as the center of the universe wise and good and beautiful. Seek rather wisdom, goodness and beauty that you may honor them everywhere.
See the way of life as a stream. A man floats with the stream and his way is easy. But if he fights and tries to go upstream, he exhausts himself.

>ケイン

>

If you plant rice, rice will grow. If you plant fear, fear will grow.
A strong man is always needed.
I seek not to know all the answers but to understand the questions.

>Paul Edwards, Gene L. Coon

>

Where is evil? In the rat whose nature it is to steal the grain. Or in the cat, whose nature it is to kill the rat?
The rat steals. Yet, for him, the cat is evil.
And to the cat, the rat.
Yet, Master, surely one of them is evil.
The rat does not steal, the cat does not murder. Rain falls, the stream flows, a hill remains. Each acts according to its nature.
Then is there no evil for men? Each man tells himself that what he does is good, at least for himself.
. . . a man may tell himself many things but is a man’s universe made up only of himself?
If a man hurts me and I punish him, perhaps he will not hurt another.
And if you do nothing?
He will learn he can do as he wishes.
Or, perhaps, he will learn that some men receive injury but return kindness.

>国井雅比古

>

長野と岐阜の県境にある標高3067メートルの御嶽山。神が宿る霊峰といわれ山には今も信仰が息づく。色とりどりの高山植物や深い緑色に輝く池など、楽園のような風景も多くの人を引きつけている。信仰に生き、89歳の今も登りたいと願う男性と、男性を背負って登る強力(ごうりき)。神秘の池に魅せられ、その信仰の心を描きたいと望む青年。60年の歴史を持つ学校登山に挑む中学生たち。山のひとときに身も心も清められる旅。同じ景色は二度とは現れない。一瞬一瞬がすばらしい。

>Eckhart Tolle

>

  • Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body’s reaction to your mind — or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body.
  • Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.

>Donald E. Knuth

>

People who analyze algorithms have double happiness. First of all they experience the sheer beauty of elegant mathematical patterns that surround elegant computational procedures. Then they receive a practical payoff when their theories make it possible to get other jobs done more quickly and more economically.

Edsger W. Dijkstra

  • The question of whether Machines Can Think… is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.
  • Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a quality that decides between success and failure.
  • Thank goodness we don’t have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.
  • Probably I am very naive, but I also think I prefer to remain so, at least for the time being and perhaps for the rest of my life.

>Γιώργος Σεφέρης

>

Δε θέλω τίποτε άλλο παρά να μιλήσω απλά, να μου δοθεί
ετούτη η χάρη.
Γιατί καί τό τραγούδι το φορτώσαμε με τόσες μουσικές
πού σιγά-σιγά βουλιάζει
και την τέχνη μας τη στολίσαμε τόσο πολύ πού φαγώθηκε
από τά μαλάματα το πρόσωπό της
κι είναι καιρός να πούμε τα λιγοστά μας λόγια γιατί η
ψυχή μας αύριο κάνει πανιά.

>Андре́й Никола́евич Колмого́ров

>Я принадлежу к тем крайне отчаянным кибернетикам, которые не видят никаких принципиальных ограничений в кибернетическом подходе к проблеме жизни и полагают, что можно анализировать жизнь во всей её полноте, в том числе и человеческое сознание, методами кибернетики. Продвижение в понимании механизма высшей нервной деятельности, включая и высшие проявления человеческого творчества, по-моему, ничего не убавляет в ценности и красоте творческих достижений человека.

Stephen Jay Gould

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and therefore never scrutinize or question.
___

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.

>Haruki Murakami

>

「空白が生まれれば、何かがやってきて埋めなくてはならない。みんなそうしておるわけだから」
「説明しなくてはそれがわからんというのは、つまり、どれだけ説明してもわからんということだ」

Grigori Perelman

To put it short, the main reason is my disagreement with the organized mathematical community… I don’t like their decisions, I consider them unjust.
(According to Interfax news, Perelman turned down the Millenium prize in June 2010 because he considers the prize unfair and Hamilton deserves as much credit as he does for the prize.)

>Maggie Wittlin

>The researchers found that while straight men are only aroused by females of the human variety, straight women are equally aroused by all human sexual activity, including lesbian, heterosexual and homosexual male sex, and at least somewhat aroused by nonhuman sex.

五木寛之

どんな人でも、自分の母国を愛し、故郷を懐かしむ気持ちはあるものだ。しかし、国を愛するということと、国家を信用するということとは別である。
私はこの日本という国と、民族と、その文化を愛している。しかし、国が国民のために存在しているとは思わない。国が私たちを最後まで守ってくれるとも思わない。
国家は国民のために存在してほしい。だが、国家は国家のために存在しているのである。
私の覚悟したいことの一つはそういうことだ。
国を愛し、国に保護されているが、最後まで国が国民を守ってくれる、などと思ってはいけない。国に頼らない、という覚悟をきめる必要があるのである。
国民としての義務をはたしつつ、国によりかからない覚悟。最後のところでは国は私たちを守ってはくれない、と「あきらめる」ことこそ、私たちがいま覚悟しなければならないことの一つだと思うのだ。

>Sir Ernest Cassel

>

When I was young, people called me a gambler. As the scale of my operations increased I became known as a speculator. Now I am called a banker. But I have been doing the same thing all the time.

>武井宏之

>

光と闇 美と醜 正義と悪
これら全ては
前があるから 後ろがあるように
ふとした拍子に
変化してしまうものだ
大切なのは
そのどちらにも とらわれる事なく
その表裏一体
全てを 受け入れる覚悟を持つ事

>麻倉葉王

>

君達が僕に巡りあってしまったのは 君達が等しく争いの場にいたからだ
人が死に憎しみの連鎖を生むだけの 争いの場にね
僕はこの時代に生まれ変わり世界中をみて回ったけど
ただの一度だって戦争がやむ事はなかった
そしてあらためて思ったよ
何だかんだ言ってもやっぱり人は争うのが好きなんだと

>荒俣宏

>

洞窟壁画は松明の火の「影」をなぞったところから始まる。プラトンは洞窟の比喩でわれわれ人間が見ているのは「イドラ」、幻影であり偶像であるという。イデアという光の叡智の影なのだ(東洋の「影」はフィギュアをも表す表裏一体、「お蔭様」という言葉で見る通り邪悪なイメージはない)。陰影法にイドラが活用され、絵画は三次元のリアリティを獲得した。影は「騙し絵」にも発展する。

>Mark Rowlands

>

I don’t believe any of these stories as accounts of a critical gulf between us and other creatures. Some of the things we think they can’t do, they can. And some of the things we think we can do, we can’t. As for the rest, well, it’s mostly a matter of degree rather than kind. Instead, our uniqueness lies simply in the fact that we tell these stories – and, what’s more, we can actually get ourselves to believe them. If I wanted a one sentence definition of human beings, this one would do: humans are the animals who actually believe the stories they tell about themselves. Humans are credulous animals.

>松原泰道

>

。。空ずるということは、どこにもとどまらないといってもいいのです。すべて、とどまると機能は停止してしまいます。
。。知識があるというところにもとどまるな、無いというところにもとどまるな、とどまらないという心にもとどまるな、と次から次へと停滞しないように進んで行くのが般若の知恵です。
。。もともと、すべては移り変わってゆくのです。
。。停まっているものは何もありません。この道理がほんとうにわかると、執着することの無意味がよくわかってきます。
。。そこに腰かけていてはいけないのです。無常観に渋滞していると、人間は虚無的になります。立ちあがって進まなければいけないのです。

>Johann Peter Eckermann

>

To-day, I dined for the first time with Goethe. No one was present except Frau von Goethe, her sister, Fräulein Ulrica, and little Walter. Goethe appeared now solely as father of a family, helping to all the dishes, carving the roast fowls with great dexterity, and not forgetting between whiles to fill the glasses. We had much lively chat about the theatre, young English people, and other topics of the day; Fräulein Ulrica was especially lively and entertaining. Goethe was generally silent, coming out only now and then with some pertinent remark. From time to time he glanced at the newspaper, now and then reading us some passages, especially about the progress of the Greeks.

>DIESEL

>

WE’RE WITH STUPID.SMART CRITIQUES. STUPID CREATES.

IF WE DIDN’T HAVE STUPID THOUGHTS WE’D HAVE NO INTERESTING THOUGHTS AT ALL.

STUPID IS TRIAL AND ERROR. MOSTLY ERROR.

SMART HAD ONE GOOD IDEA AND THAT IDEA WAS STUPID.

SMART LISTENS TO THE HEAD. STUPID LISTENS TO THE HEART.

SMART MAY HAVE THE BRAINS, BUT STUPID HAS THE BALLS.

STUPID IS TRIAL AND ERROR. MOSTLY ERROR.

STUPID MIGHT FAIL. SMART DOESN’T EVEN TRY.

SMART PLANS. STUPID IMPROVISES.

SMART HAS THE PLANS, STUPID HAS THE STORIES.

ONLY THE STUPID CAN BE TRULY BRILLIANT.

LONG LIVE STUPID.

日産太郎

エジプト駐在の会社員が日本にいる家族と毎日スカイプで連絡を取り合っていた。ある日子供がちらしのコンピュータの写真を指差してパパと言った。

>Diesel

>

  • Smart listens to the head. Stupid listens to the heart.
  • Smart had one good idea and that idea was stupid.
  • Stupid is trial and error. Mostly error.
  • Smart may have the brains, but stupid has the balls.
  • Smart has the brains, stupid has the balls.
  • Stupid might fail. Smart doesn’t even try.
  • Smart has the plans, stupid has the stories.
  • If we didn’t have stupid thoughts we’d have no interesting thoughts at all.
  • Only the stupid can be truly brilliant.
  • We’re with stupid.
  • Smart may have the answers, but stupid has all the interesting questions.
  • Smart says No. Stupid says Yes.
Be stupid. DIESEL