| 19 Feb, 2009 |
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When I received the Nobel Prize, the only big lump sum of money I have ever seen, I had to do something with it. The easiest way to drop this hot potato was to invest it, to buy shares. I knew that World War II was coming and I was afraid that if I had shares which rise in case of war, I would wish for war. So I asked my agent to buy shares which go down in the event of war. This he did. I lost my money and saved my soul. Time is what prevents everything from happening at once. I have lived some thirty years on this planet and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. Seek not for fresher founts afar, Just drop you bucket where you are. The Pope! How many divisions has _he_ got ? Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God. That old saw about the early bird just proves that the worm should have stayed in bed. The modern definition of "racist" is "someone who is winning an argument with a liberal. One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries. Not many people know this ... but I happen to be famous. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. The history of science is everywhere speculative. It is a marvelous hiatory. It makes you proud to be a human being. The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit. When I was one-and-twenty, You can never get the smell of smoke out. Like the smell of failure in life. "We are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity. Personally I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world [chess] championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility. If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation. There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on. I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it. Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. Do not fear death so much but rather the inadequate life. In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. We must love one another or die. Because he once wrote, "We must love one another or die," he can command me to follow him. We must love one another and die. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. Streets full of water; please advise. That ready wit, which you so partially allow me, ... may create many admirers; but, take my word for it, it makes few friends. It shines and dazzles like the noonday sun, but, like that, too, it is very apt to scorch, and therefore is always feared. The milder morning and evening light and heat of that planet soothe and calm our minds. Never seek for wit; if it present itself, well and good; but even then, let your judgement interpose, and take care that it be not at the expense of anybody. ... Nature, whose sweet rains fall of just and unjust alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undetected. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. Our love is God. Lets go grab a slushie. The discovery of this strange society was a curiously refreshing thing; to realize that there were ten new trades in the world was like looking at the first ship or the first plough. It made a man feel what he should feel, that he was still in the childhood of the world. Money is like muck, not good except it be spread. It has beeen said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly. Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing -- and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even. The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards. I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat. On account of us being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does. People love high ideals, but they got to be about 33-percent plausible. Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business. I have one of those real old American built cars. The kind that just PUNCHES through accidents. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who has never learned to walk. I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird, and not enough the bad luck of the early worm. Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. |
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