Words of Wisdom

“A second thing that an individual must do in seeking to love his enemy is to discover the element of good in his enemy, and everytime you begin to hate that person and think of hating that person, realize that there is some good there and look at those good points which will over-balance the bad points.”

“Every book, remember, is dead until a reader activates it by reading. Every time that you read you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies.”

“We live in a culture in which intelligence is denied relevance altogether, in a search for radical innocence, or is defended as an instrument of authority and repression. In my view, the only intelligence worth defending is critical, dialectical, skeptical, desimplifying.”

“I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention — invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.”

“I am of the firm belief that everybody could write books and I never understand why they don’t. After all, everyone speaks. Once the grammar has been learnt it is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say.”

“World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor—it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement.”

In case you missed it from earlier this week, Walter Isaacson visited Big Think to discuss the inextricable link between new technologies and creative communities built around them.

In case you missed it from earlier this week, Bill Nye visited Big Think to discuss dog evolution and what it teaches us about race.

“A depressing number of people seem to process everything literally. They are to wit as a blind man is to a forest, able to find every tree, but each one coming as a surprise.”

“Not long ago, if you wanted to seize political power in a country you had merely to control the army and the police… Today a country belongs to the person who controls communications.”

Considered a major inspiration for the founding of the international Scouting movement, Major Frederick Russell Burnham was an adventurer who wrote on the power of leadership.

“Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.”

“When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.”

“There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.” The author and biochemist was born 2 January 1920.

“People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point.”

“Human beings are good at many things, but thinking about our species as a whole is not one of our strong points.”

The Russian-American author of Lolita wrote constantly on themes of oppression, subversion, and tyranny.

“I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me, they are the role model for being alive.”

“I am utterly convinced that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will eventually unite not to destroy but to edify, and that the future will belong to those who have done the most for the sake of suffering humanity.”

“I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.”

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”

In case you missed it from earlier this week, former NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen visited Big Think to discuss how NATO deals with terrorist threats and what the international community must do to combat ISIS.

In case you missed it from earlier this week, economist Larry Summers visited Big Think to discuss infrastructure spending and why there’s no better time than now to perform maintenance on our roads, ports, and schools.

“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

“Good science and good art are always about a condition of awe … I don’t think there is any other function for the poet or the scientist in the human tribe but the astonishment of the soul.”

“What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them.”

The English author’s words resonate today as violent regimes reign across the globe and the United States grapples with the findings of the Senate torture report.

“More noise occurs from a single man shouting than a hundred thousand who are quiet.”  

In case you missed it from earlier this week, author Sam Harris visited Big Think to discuss his use of the word “spirituality” and the importance of reappropriating powerful terms.

“Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst.”