A buddy of mine just posted this on facebook, so I'm not positive on the source, but he said the Washington Post had a "summarize 2020" contest and some kid from the US won with: "2020 was like taking care to look both ways before you cross the road, and then being hit by a submarine." Abso-fucking-lutely, kid!
‘What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.’ ~ Leo Tolstoy
“Men*, it is well said, think in herds. It will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their sense slowly, and one by one.” Charles Mackay *Writing in 1841, so probably "people" is more appropriate now.
"Consciousness is an end in itself. We torture ourselves getting somewhere, and when we get there it is nowhere, for there is nowhere to get to." ~ D. H. Lawrence
"Some one will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong — acting the part of a good man or of a bad." ~Socrates (by way of Plato)
Lol, I was actually taking Einstein out of context. He meant that knowledge is only "alive" when it is in someone's head rather than in a book. I disagree strongly with this notion, but the quote is still funny.
I think I understand Einstein's point though. Knowledge only has potential to change the world when recorded in a book. But it is only when knowledge is being considered and then subsequently applied can it change the world. Living things change the world by their mere existence, even if only in minor ways. Knowledge requires application by something already alive to do that much. Einstein can no longer change the world. The knowledge he created can only change things if we use it.
I guess. But the fact is knowledge is not dead if it is written down -- in hibernation at worst. Knowledge in the brain can be altered by bias, bad memory, or bad interpretation. It can be forgotten or misunderstood, and the person holding it in his head could die and the knowledge be lost. Books and brains go together in symbiosis. Einstein's perspective is so extreme as to be a straw man argument.
Wait—are either one of you really familiar enough with Einstein's actual argument (and the ideas behind it) to pass judgement on it? I mean, I'm certainly not! I'd need to look into it quite a bit before passing judgement on it. Otherwise an accusation of strawmanning is itself just an oaten effigy erected to be struck down.
I found his address on the subject of education from which the quote was taken: on_edu.pdf (iitm.ac.in) The paragraph in which it occurs is as follows: "Sometimes one sees in the school simply the instrument for transferring a certain maximum quantity of knowledge to the growing generation. But that’s not right. Knowledge is dead; the school, however, serves the living. It should develop in the young individuals those equalities and capabilities which are of value for the welfare of the commonwealth. But that does not mean that individuality should be destroyed and the individual becomes a mere tool of the community, like a bee or an ant. For a community of standerdized individuals without personal originality and personal aims would be a poor community without possibilities for development. On the contrary, the aim must be the training of independently thinking and acting individuals, who, however, see in the service of the community their highest life problem."
Good work Friedrich! It sounds like he's contrasting knowledge against 'the school'—a living changeable thing that responds to currents and pressures. Once written down, knowledge is a dead thing. It just sits there on the page until somebody else comes along to challenge or develop it further. It's only really a living thing when it's free from the page, in development. Once you imprint the results what you get is a fossil, a footprint. Of course he's also implying thought is the foot, marching on and on, leaving many such dead prints in its wake. At least I *think* that's what he's saying. A little hard to determine from such a brief statement. If I were interested enough, I'd read more of his thoughts and try to find other writing he's done on this and similar topics.
I've read the context. Besides what Friedrich stated, he does get more into books. Though I don't have the book anymore that I read it from. It was on loan.
The story goes that someone complained to Mel Brooks about the vulgarity in his movies. He answered, "Vulgarity? My movies rise below vulgarity!"
