Dave > Dave's Quotes

“Only the noble of heart are called to difficulty.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”
― W.C. Fields

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
― Joel Isaac, The Worlds of American Intellectual History

“It worked. Chicago’s manufacturers flocked to Chicago Edison, which Insull soon renamed the Commonwealth Edison Company. In 1908, a reporter for Electrical World and Engineer noted that “although isolated plants are still numerous in Chicago, they were never so hard pressed by central station service as now…. The Commonwealth Edison Company has among its customers establishments formerly run by some of the largest isolated plants in the city.” A year later, the Electrical Review and Western Electrician wrote that Insull’s customers “now included a large number of great manufacturing and industrial plants.” As more manufacturers joined the system, Insull continued to push down prices. Per-capita sales of electricity skyrocketed in Chicago, rising from about 10 kilowatt-hours in 1899 to nearly 450 kilowatt-hours by 1915.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“If Europe succeeds in finding such a path, perhaps its formula could be copied on the global level. If the European project fails, however, it would indicate that belief in the liberal values of freedom and tolerance is not enough to resolve the cultural conflicts of the world and to unite humankind in the face of nuclear war, ecological collapse, and technological disruption.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“The most fundamental characteristic of this mysterious God is that we cannot say anything concrete about Him. This is the God of the philosophers, the God we talk about when we sit around a campfire late at night and wonder what life is all about.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“Unlike the creators of The Matrix and The Truman Show, Huxley doubted the possibility of escape, because he questioned whether there was anybody to make the escape. Since your brain and your “self” are part of the matrix, to escape the matrix you must escape your self. That, however, is a possibility worth exploring. Escaping the narrow definition of self might well become a necessary survival skill in the twenty-first century.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century