Phenomenon Quotes - Page 19

• We should always keep an open mind about any new phenomenon in nature. To merely say that's impossible, therefore it doesn't exist, is to commit a serious error. A much better approach would be to say That's quite unlikely, but show me the evidence you have that says that it may be so. It would be the height of arrogance to think that man knows everything possible about the Universe or the Earth. There are many things yet to be discovered, and that is why we have scientific research (or any kind of research). That should be the rationalist's approach to parapsychology and the occult.

  Gordon Stein

  Men, Thinking, Errors

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• In view of the importance of philanthropy in our society, it is surprising that so little attention has been given to it by economic or social theorists. In economic theory, especially, the subject is almost completely ignored. This is not, I think, because economists regard mankind as basically selfish or even because economic man is supposed to act only in his self-interest; it is rather because economics has essentially grown up around the phenomenon of exchange and its theoretical structure rests heavily on this process.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Selfish, Men, Thinking

  "Notes on a Theory of Philanthropy". "Philanthropy and Public Policy", edited by Frank G. Dickinson, 1962.

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• From a purely external point of view there is no will; and to find will in any phenomenon requires a certain empathy; we observe aman's actions and place ourselves partly but not wholly in his position; or we act, and place ourselves partly in the position of an outsider.

  T. S. Eliot

  Views, Empathy, Outsiders

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• Truth needs meditative eyes. If you don't have meditative eyes, then the whole life is just dull dead facts, unrelated to each other, accidental, meaningless, a jumble, just a chance phenomenon. If you see the truth, everything falls into line, everything falls together in a harmony, everything starts having significance.

  Rajneesh

  Life, Truth, Fall

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• A thing is either alive or it isn’t; there is nothing that is almost alive. There is but the remotest possibility of the origin of life by spontaneous generation, and every likelihood that Arrhenius is right when he dares to claim that life is a cosmic phenomenon, something that drifts between the spheres, like light, and like light transiently descends upon those fit to receive it.

  Donald C. Peattie

  Light, Origin Of Life, Spheres

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• Life is a phenomenon sui generis, a primal fact in its own right, like energy. Cut flesh or wood how you like, hack at them in a baffled fury—you cannot find life itself, you can only see what it built out of the lifeless dust.

  Donald C. Peattie

  Cutting, Dust, Flesh

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• In one of the most brilliant papers in the English language Hume made it clear that what we speak of as 'causality' is nothing more than the phenomenon of repetition. When we mix sulphur with saltpeter and charcoal we always get gunpowder. This is true of every event subsumed by a causal law in other words, everything which can be called scientific knowledge. "It is custom which rules ," Hume said, and in that one sentence undermined both science and philosophy .

  Philip K. Dick

  Philosophy, Law, Gunpowder

  "To The High Castle: Philip K. Dick: A Life 1928-1962". Book by Gregg Rickman, 1989.

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• Magic, then, is not a method, but a language; it is part and parcel of that greater phenomenon, ritual, which is the language of religion. Ritual is a symbolic transformation of experiences that no other medium can adequately express.

  Susanne Katherina Langer

  Magic, Transformation, Language

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• Prayer is a universal phenomenon in the soul-life of man. It is the soul's reaction to the terrors and joys, the uncertainties and dreams of life.

  Joseph Hertz

  Dream, Prayer, Men

  Joseph Herman Hertz (1943). “Early and Late: Addresses, Messages, and Papers”, Hindhead, Surrey : The Soncino Press

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• Corruption appears to be a universal phenomenon that lays its own imperious claims on the world, and therefore it is the duty of all nations to prepare themselves against its onslaught by taking proper precautions.

  Robert Payne

  World, Corruption, Precaution

  Robert Payne (1975). “The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Present-Day America”, Praeger Publishers

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• Scientific wealth tends to accumulate according to the law of compound interest. Every addition to knowledge of the properties of matter supplies the physical scientist with new instrumental means for discovering and interpreting phenomena of nature, which in their turn afford foundations of fresh generalisations, bringing gains of permanent value into the great storehouse of natural philosophy.

  Lord Kelvin

  Philosophy, Mean, Law

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• Today, any action anywhere on earth has an immediate repercussion on all five continents. News of a victory of the Eastern armies in Morocco or Shanghai travels instantly, thanks to modern means of communication, to all Eastern peoples and fills them with enthusiasm and faith. This phenomenon is, of course, unprecedented in the history of man.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Communication, Mean, Army

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• It seems to me the book has not just aesthetic values - the charming little clothy box of the thing, the smell of the glue, even the print, which has its own beauty. But there's something about the sensation of ink on paper that is in some sense a thing, a phenomenon rather than an epiphenomenon. I can't break the association of electric trash with the computer screen. Words on the screen give the sense of being just another passing electronic wriggle.

  John Updike

  Book, Smell, Giving

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• Since everything in nature answers to a moral power, if any phenomenon remains brute and dark, it is that the corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet active.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dark, Power, Perception

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.208, Harvard University Press

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• Whenever a man acts purposively, he acts under a belief in some experimental phenomenon. Consequently, the sum of the experimental phenomena that a proposition implies makes up its entire bearing upon human conduct.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Men, Belief, Humans

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1974). “Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce”, p.285, Harvard University Press

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• Can we disregard the growing phenomenon of "environmental refugees", people who are forced by the degradation of their natural habitat to forsake it - and often their possessions as well - in order to face the dangers and uncertainties of forced displacement? Can we remain impassive in the face of actual and potential conflicts involving access to natural resources? All these are issues with a profound impact on the exercise of human rights, such as the right to life, food, health and development.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Exercise, Order, Issues

  Pope Benedict XVI (2014). “The Garden of God”, p.41, CUA Press

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• The arc of the celebrity phenomenon ultimately is: everything turns to dust and everything does go away.

  George Hickenlooper

  Dust, Going Away, Doe

  Source: www.indiewire.com

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• I am, I fully grant, a phenomenon, but not because of any speed in composition. I asked myself the other day, "Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?" I couldn't think of anyone.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Thinking, Issues, Speed

  "On Writing Speedily", first published in The New York Times Book Review (1986); republished in "Miles Gone By : A Literary Autobiography" by William F. Buckley Jr., (p. 405), 2004.

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• The vulgar look upon a man, who is reckoned a fine speaker, as a phenomenon, a supernatural being, and endowed with some peculiargift of Heaven; they stare at him, if he walks in the park, and cry, that is he. You will, I am sure, view him in a juster light, and nulla formidine. You will consider him only as a man of good sense, who adorns common thoughts with the graces of elocution, and the elegancy of style. The miracle will then cease.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Men, Supernatural Beings, Light

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• The union of theorizer, organizer, and leader in one man is the rarest phenomenon on earth; therein lies greatness.

  Adolf Hitler

  Lying, Greatness, Men

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• In astrophysics, we care about how matter, motion and energy manifest in objects and phenomenon in the universe. Stars are born. They live out their lives. They die. Some of the ones that die explode. Our sun will not be one of those, but it will die. And it'll take Earth with us. So we make sure we have other destinations in mind when that happens. And I've got it on my calendar.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Stars, Mind, Energy

  "Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson's one-man mission". "60 minutes" with Charlie Rose, www.cbsnews.com. March 22, 2015.

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• For it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  World, Justified, Existence

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2010). “The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs”, p.163, Vintage

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• The phenomenon of nature is more splendid than the daily events of nature, certainly, so then the twentieth century is splendid.

  Gertrude Stein

  Nature, Events, Century

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• The youth rebellion [1968] is a worldwide phenomenon that has not been seen before in history. I do not believe they will calm down ad be ad execs at thirty as the Establishment would like us to believe.

  William S. Burroughs

  Believe, Calm, Youth

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• There has been in our time a lack of reliance on language and a lack of experimentation which are frightening to anyone who sees them as symptoms. We know the phenomenon of stage-fright: it holds the player shivering, incapable of speech or action. Perhaps there is an audience-fright which the play can feel, which leaves him with these incapacities.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Player, Speech, Action

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