If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.
Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the second law of thermodynamics; i. e. it always increases.
Duty - that which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.
Of all follies there is none greater than wanting to make the world a better place.
Our great problem, is that children now know whatever they want to know - at the press of a button they can discover all horrors of the adult world. They know very early on that the world is sometimes a very dark, difficult and complex place, and the literature they read must reflect that. Otherwise we're just entertaining them to pass the time.
If literature survives at all, it is as retreat for those who refuse to assimilate to American mass culture.
Maria Edgeworth grumbled against vandals who ruined immortal works by quoting the life out of them. "How far our literature may in future suffer from these blighting swarms, will best be conceived by a glance at what they have already withered and blasted of the favourite productions of our most popular poets. " Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden, scissored, patched, and frayed.
We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.
It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean.
It's a very different thing when you're able to read something and see it in your mind, then to imagine it on screen. It's emotional transference that you don't have in literature that you have in movies. People invest in the person they see on the screen and they can't shift gears.
So the most difficult thing is always to keep your beginner's mind. There is no need to have a deep understanding of Zen. Even though you read much Zen literature, you must read each sentence with a fresh mind. You should not say, "I know what Zen is," or "I have attained enlightenment. " This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner. Be very very careful about this point. If you start to practice zazen, you will begin to appreciate your beginner's mind. It is the secret of Zen practice.
The first phase of American political history was characterized by the conflict between the Federalists and the Republicans, and it resulted in the complete triumph of the latter.
There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.
Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.
If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.
I think the relation between the monarchy and the press is very much a two-way street.
Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.
When I write something, every word of it is meant. I can't say it enough.
An organization's reason for being, like that of any organism, is to help the parts that are in relationship to each other, to be able to deal with change in the environment.
The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.