Artificial Quotes

You must not feel persecuted and examined. Liberate yourself from the idea that people are watching you.

Russell Brand

Ideas, People, Feels

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I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.

Alan Turing

Believe, Thinking, Machines

"Computing Machinery and Intelligence". Mind - A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy, Volume 59, No. 236, p. 442, 1950.

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Mankind is divided into two classes: those who, being artificial, praise nature, and those who, being natural, praise art.

Bertrand Russell

Art, Class, Two

Bertrand Russell (2013). “Mortals and Others, Volume I: American Essays 1931-1935”, p.24, Routledge

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The point was living with grace, decency, and attention to the world, and breaking free of the artificial constructs in your own life.

Scott Jurek

Grace, Attention, World

Scott Jurek, Steve Friedman (2012). “Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness”, p.105, A&C Black

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Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.

Ambrose Bierce

Life, Simple, Temporary Insanity

Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.155, University of Georgia Press

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[I] could see how nervous everybody was in the beginning and how silent it was when we had trouble with the artificial heart [during the surgery, but later in the operation, when it was working, there were moments] of loud and raucous humor.

William DeVries

Heart, Science, Nervous

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Because of jealousy you are in constant suffering; you become mean to others. And because of jealousy you start becoming phony, because you start pretending. You start pretending things that you don't have, you start pretending things which you CAN'T have, which are not natural to you. You become more and more artificial. Imitating others, competing with others, what else can you do? If somebody has something and you don't have it, and you don't have a natural possibility of having it, the only way is to have some cheap substitute for it.

Rajneesh

Jealousy, Mean, Suffering

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Where necessity ends, desire and curiosity begin; and no sooner are we supplied with everything nature can demand than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.

Samuel Johnson

Curiosity, Desire, Demand

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What is the difference between astroturf and grass? I don't know, I never smoked astroturf.

Tug McGraw

Funny, Weed, Baseball

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People always make this totally artificial distinction between what is commercial and what is good. They quote that maxim "Nobody ever lost money underestimating the public's taste" and I think that's very wrongheaded. I like to believe the audience is actually intelligent, because it's made up of other people like yourself.

Douglas Adams

Believe, Intelligent, Thinking

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Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.

Margaret Mead

Love, Dance, Song

"Margaret Mead: A Life". Book by Jane Howard, 1984.

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... [L]ess than at any time does a simple reproduction of reality tell us anything about reality. A photograph of the Krupp works or GEC yields almost nothing about those institutions. Reality proper has slipped into the functional. The reification of human relationships, the factory, let's say, no longer reveals these relationships. Therefore something has to be constructed, something artificial, something set up.

Walter Benjamin

Simple, Reality, Yield

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... the age of simulation thus begins with a liquidation of all referentials - worse: by their artificial resurrection in systems of signs, a more ductile material than meaning... It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself.

Jean Baudrillard

Real, Age, Resurrection

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Give me artificial flowers - porcelain and metal glories - neither fading nor decaying, forms unaging. Flowers of the splendid gardens of another place, where Forms and Styles and Knowledge dwell. I love flowers made of glass or gold, true Art's true gifts, their painted hues more beautiful than nature's, worked in nacre and enamel, with perfect leaves and branches.

C.P. Cavafy

Love, Beautiful, Art

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Sir, Your letter of the 15th is received, but Age has long since obliged me to withhold my mind from Speculations of the difficulty of those of your letter, that their are means of artificial buoyancy by which man may be supported in the Air, the Balloon has proved, and that means of directing it may be discovered is against no law of Nature and is therefore possible as in the case of Birds, but to do this by mechanical means alone in a medium so rare and unassisting as air must have the aid of some principal not yet generally known.

Thomas Jefferson

Mean, Men, Air

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Who has reached the extreme limits of scale with the same infallible precision, equally guarded against the false refinement of artificial elegance and the roughness of spurious force? Who has better known how to breathe anguish and dread into the purest and most exquisite forms?

Charles Gounod

Limits, Breathe, Elegance

Marie Anne de Bovet, Charles Gounod (1891). “Charles Gounod: His Life and His Works”

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I am not a big fan of positive thinking. The term suggests that there is something negative that you have to counteract by being positive. That is an artificial duality.

Srikumar Rao

Positive Thinking, Being Positive, Fans

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Art is nothing tangible. We cannot call a painting 'art' as the words 'artifact' and 'artificial' imply. The thing made is a work of art made by art, but not itself art. The art remains in the artist and is the knowledge by which things are made.

Ananda Coomaraswamy

Art, Tangible, Painting

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (2017). “Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art”, p.19, Pickle Partners Publishing

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There is... an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendency.

Thomas Jefferson

Government, Aristocracy, Ingredients

Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.187, Cambridge University Press

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A lot of movies about artificial intelligence envision that AIs will be very intelligent but missing some key emotional qualities of humans and therefore turn out to be very dangerous.

Ray Kurzweil

Intelligent, Emotional, Keys

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I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profound (and potential wild) as Artificial Intelligence.

Vernor Vinge

Profound, Research, Artificial Intelligence

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He who studies to imitate the poet Pindar, O Julius, relies on artificial wings fastened on with wax, and is sure to give his name to a glassy sea.

Horace

Sea, Names, Wings

"Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 387-88, Carmina, IV, 2, 1, 1922.

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The sumptuous age of stars and images is reduced to a few artificial tornado effects, pathetic fake buildings, and childish tricks which the crowd pretends to be taken in by to avoid feeling too disappointed. Ghost towns, ghost people. The whole place has the same air of obsolescence about it as Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard.

Jean Baudrillard

Stars, Taken, Sunset

Jean Baudrillard, Francesco Proto, Keith Broadfoot (2006). “Mass Identity Architecture: Architectural Writings of Jean Baudrillard”, Academy Press

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As we gain satisfaction from artificial substitutes for nature we forget that there is no known substitute for Nature, the real thing and its eons of intelligent, life supportive, experience. Each substitute we create falls short of nature's balanced perfection, thus producing our pollution, garbage and relationship conflicts.

Michael J Cohen

Real, Fall, Intelligent

Michael J. Cohen (2003). “The Web of Life Imperative: Regenerative Ecopsychology Techniques That Help People Think in Balance with Natural Systems”, p.84, Trafford Publishing

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