Singularity Quotes - Page 4

• The most powerful words in English are 'Tell me a story,' words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and art itself. I was born into the century in which novels lost their stories, poems their rhymes, paintings their form, and music its beauty, but that does not mean I had to like that trend or go along with it. I fight against these movements with every book I write.

  Pat Conroy

  Art, Powerful, Book

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• I believe modern SF needs to at least be aware of the singularity, if only so that it can dismiss it intelligently (or work around it). But I suspect the singularity is like faster-than-light travel for the IT generation. We may hope for it, and the rules don't forbid it, but we don't know how to do it yet (and it may not be possible).

  Charles Stross

  Believe, Light, Needs

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. July 2, 2012.

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• Perhaps [transgression] is like a flash of lightning in the night which, from the beginning of time, gives a dense and black intensity to the night it denies, which lights up the night from the inside, from top to bottom, yet owes to the dark the stark clarity of its manifestation, its harrowing and poised singularity.

  Michel Foucault

  Dark, Night, Light

  Michel Foucault, Jeremy Carrette (2013). “Religion and Culture”, p.61, Routledge

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• Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity -- technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.

  Ray Kurzweil

  Light, Technological Change, Profound

  "Want to impress your friends? Tell them internet growth is sigmoidal, not exponential" by Charles Arthur, www.theguardian.com. November 26, 2007.

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• And if there be any addition to knowledge, it is rather a new knowledge than a greater knowledge; rather a singularity in a desire of proposing something that was not knownat all beforethananimproving, anadvancing, a multiplying of former inceptions; and by that means, no knowledge comes to be perfect.

  John Donne

  Mean, Perfect, Desire

  1626 Sermon preached at the funeral of Sir William Cockayne, 12 Dec.

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• Actors, who should pride themselves on their singularity, are forever trying to be someone else. It isn’t necessary for you, the actor, to like yourself— self-love isn’t easy to come by for most of us— but you must learn to trust who you are. There is no one else like you.

  Michael Shurtleff

  Pride, Self, Forever

  Michael Shurtleff (2009). “Audition: Everything an Actor Needs to Know to Get the Part”, p.3, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• Fashion constantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, singularity and vulgarity.

  William Hazlitt

  Fashion, Two, Ends

  1818 'On Fashion', in the Scots Magazine.

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• Who affects useless singularities has surely a little mind.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Mind, Useless, Littles

  "Aphorisms on man. Translated from the original manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, citizen of Zuric. ; [One line from Juvenal]" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1790.

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• Cavendish was a great Man with extraordinary singularities-His voice was squeaking his manner nervous He was afraid of strangers & seemed when embarrassed to articulate with difficulty-He wore the costume of our grandfathers. Was enormously rich but made no use of his wealth... He Cavendish lived latterly the life of a solitary, came to the Club dinner & to the Royal Society: but received nobody at his home. He was acute sagacious & profound & I think the most accomplished British Philosopher of his time.

  Humphry Davy

  Home, Men, Thinking

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• Do you realize that if you fall into a black hole, you will see the entire future of the Universe unfold in front of you in a matter of moments and you will emerge into another space-time created by the singularity of the black hole you just fell into?

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Fall, Space, Black

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• When we begin to look around us, to observe individuals and societies, and to study philosophies and religions, we realize that our loneliness is shared. Our solitude is plural, and our singularity is the similarity between us.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Philosophy, Loneliness, Solitude

  Tariq Ramadan (2010). “The Quest for Meaning: Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism”, p.54, Penguin UK

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• What happens whenever we convert a writer into a symbol is that we lose the writer himself in all his indefeasible singularity, his particular inimitable genius.

  Alfred Kazin

  Writing, Genius, Symbols

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• For me, music is in no way ornamental or decorative, it's constitutive of who I am. And that's why, when I say I'm a blues man, that's a very serious vocation - to muster the courage to find your own unique voice, to forge your distinctive style in the world, to leave your imprint in the sands of time in such a way that your singularity, your individuality, remains something that people have to come to terms with.

  Cornel West

  Unique, Men, Who I Am

  "Cornel West, 'Living And Loving Out Loud'". "Talk of the Nation" with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. October 29, 2009.

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• Teach the legal rights of trees, the nobility of hills; respect the beauty of singularity, the value of solitude.

  Josephine Winslow Johnson

  Rights, Tree, Solitude

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• Now, if the cooperation of some thousands of millions of cells in our brain can produce our consciousness, a true singularity, the idea becomes vastly more plausible that the cooperation of humanity, or some sections of it, may determine what Comte calls a Great Being.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Cells, Ideas, Humanity

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• the sex even in serious pornography has less singularity than the mating of squirrels.

  Storm Jameson

  Sex, Squirrels, Serious

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• Strive not for singularity in dress; Fools have the more and men of sense the less. To look original is not worth while, But be in mind a little out of style.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Men, Mind, Style

  Ambrose Bierce (2015). “A Cynic Looks at Life”, p.38, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• I don't know who are the men and who are the women. In French I used to say "je suis un femme et une homme." That is to say a feminine male and a masculine female. A she man and a he woman. What I am interested in is developing a singularity, which would be my own.

  Orlan

  Men, Males, Female

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Some men develop their own singularity. Football makes men conform to stereotypes: the warrior or the hunter. Football produces a certain kind of masculinity - the drunk kind, the king who will yell the worst nationalist's ideas. In front of those, it is very difficult to be a dignified woman.

  Orlan

  Football, Kings, Warrior

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• We already know the limits of Einstein's theories. From the centers of black holes at the very beginning of the universe - we call these singularities - Einstein's equations fail. In fact, people have joked that's where God is dividing by zero.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Zero, People, Black

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Regular geometry, the geometry of Euclid, is concerned with shapes which are smooth, except perhaps for corners and lines, special lines which are singularities, but some shapes in nature are so complicated that they are equally complicated at the big scale and come closer and closer and they don't become any less complicated.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Special, Shapes, Lines

  Source: bigthink.com

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• What is remarkable about the Greeks - even pre-philosophically - is that despite the salience of religious rituals in their lives, when it came to the question of what it is that makes an individual human life worth living they didn't look to the immortals but rather approached the question in mortal terms. Their approaching the question of human mattering in human terms is the singularity that creates the conditions for philosophy in ancient Greece, most especially as these conditions were realized in the city-state of Athens.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Religious, Philosophy, Cities

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• Of course, it's always difficult to disentangle fact from fiction in relation to, e.g., the singularity project. Many scientists I know are dismissive of transhumanist claims, BUT the last 100 years has surely taught us never to underestimate the pace and scope of scientific progress. However, even if much of this turns out to be science-fiction, it also reveals a way of thinking about human life that I find deeply troubling.

  George Pattison

  Thinking, Years, Taught Us

  "Towards hope". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. July 18, 2014.

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• Can one say that there is a way of crying out, of speaking, which is properly feminine? Personally, I don't think so. In the end, I find this is another way of putting women in a kind of singularity, a ghetto, which is not what I want. I want them to be singular and universal at the same time.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Ghetto, Thinking, Want

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

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• I mean just look at haiku, the idea of it. We want to focus on that singularity, on that simplicity, but we still want to add features and add value, but we want to do it in a way that fits in with that mentality of simplicity. You have to spend a lot of time thinking about it.

  Biz Stone

  Mean, Thinking, Ideas

  Source: therumpus.net

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