The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge - Abraham Flexner
"Curiosity?" asked Mr. Eastman. "Yes," I replied, "curiosity, which may or may not eventuate in something useful, is probably the outstanding characteristic of modern thinking."
"Institutions of learning should be devoted to the cultivation of curiosity and the less they are deflected by considerations of immediacy of application, the more likely they are to contribute not only to human welfare but to the equally important satisfaction of intellectual interest which may indeed be said to have become the ruling passion of intellectual life in modern times."
"I noticed quite early that Ehrlich would work long hours at his desk, completely absorbed in microscopic observation. Moreover, his desk gradually became covered with colored spots of every description. As I saw him sitting at work one day, I went up to him and asked what he was doing with all his rainbow array of colors on his table. Thereupon this young student in his first semester supposedly pursuing the regular course in anatomy looked up at me and blandly remarked, "Ich probiere." This might be freely translated, "I am trying" or "I am just fooling." I replied to him, "Very well. Go on with your fooling." Soon I saw that without any teaching or direction whatsoever on my part I possessed in Ehrlich a student of unusual quality."
"These great artists—for such are scientists and bacteriologists—disseminated the spirit which prevailed in laboratories in which they were simply following the line of their own natural curiosity."
"I have spoken of mathematics; but what I say is equally true of music and art and of every other expression of the untrammeled human spirit. The mere fact that they bring satisfaction to an individual soul bent upon its own purification and elevation is all the justification that they need."
"A stipend was awarded to enable a Harvard professor to come to Princeton: he wrote asking, "What are my duties?" I replied: "You have no duties—only opportunities.""
Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework - Douglas Engelbart
"The entire effect of an individual on the world stems essentially from what he can transmit to the world through his limited motor channels."
"We find more and more as the process becomes complex that the value of the human's contribution depends upon how much freedom he is given to be disorderly in his course of action."
The Computer as a Communication Device - J.C.R. Licklider & Robert W. Taylor
"What will on-line interactive communities be like? They will be communities not of common location, but of common interest."
"At your command, your OLIVER will take notes (or refrain from taking notes) on what you do, what you read, what you buy and where you buy it. It will know who your friends are, your mere acquaintances. It will know your value structure, who is prestigious in your eyes, for whom you will do what, with what priority, and who can have access to which of your personal files. Your computer will know who is prestigious in your eyes and buffer you from a demanding world. It will know your organization's rules pertaining to proprietary information and the government's rules relating to security classification."
"First, life will be happier for the on-line individual because the people with whom one interacts most strongly will be selected more by commonality of interests and goals than by accidents of proximity."
Oration on the Dignity of Man - Pico della Mirandola
"We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine."
"Enos hu shinnujim vekammah tebbaoth haj" — "man is a living creature of varied, multiform and ever-changing nature"
"Let a certain saving ambition invade our souls so that, impatient of mediocrity, we plant after the highest things and (since, if we will, we can) bend all efforts to their achievement."
"The Chaldean interpreters write that it was a saying of Zoroaster that the soul is a winged creature. When her wings fall from her, she is plunged into the body; but when they grow strong again, she flies back to supernal regions."
Inside Bureaucracy - Anthony Downs
"The zealots who founded it decline in power and influence because zealots are usually poor administrators, since they are primarily concerned with substantive issues and are too biased towards their sacred policies to settle internal conflicts impartially."
Architecture, Essay on Art - Etienne-Louis Boullée
"Don't we derive all our ideas from nature? And does not genius for us lie in the forceful manner in which our senses are reminded of nature?"
"The grandeur of nature raises our spirits and always gives us pleasure. When man is looking down on the earth from a great height and sees it elude his gaze, he is dazzled by the brilliance and beauty of all before him and, rejoicing in its vastness, he is in ecstasy."
"I will add one last observation to those I have already made—one that seems to me of great importance. It is that nature never deviates in its forward march, and everything in nature is striving towards the goal of perfection."
"What should we understand by inspiration? It is to be moved by such an excess of sensibility at the sight of an object, that all the faculties of our soul are disturbed to such an extent that we feel it is departing from our body. In this state of excitement we feel superior to ourselves, an exquisite sensation exalts us; a power beyond our control drives us and makes our faculties divine."
"To describe one's pleasures is to cease living under their influence, to cease to enjoy them, to cease to exist."