You May Also Like / View all maxioms
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Men have become the tools of their tools.
We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. read more
We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. Printing is no longer the only way of reproducing books. Reading them, however, has not changed...
The coming of the printing press must have seemed as if it would turn the world upside down in the read more
The coming of the printing press must have seemed as if it would turn the world upside down in the way it spread and, above all, democratized knowledge. Provide you could pay and read, what was on the shelves in the new bookshops was yours for the taking. The speed with which printing presses and their operators fanned out across Europe is extraordinary. From the single Mainz press of 1457, it took only twenty-three years to establish presses in 110 towns: 50 in Ita!0 in Germany, 9 in France, 8 in Spain, 8 in Holland, 4 in England, and so on.
The facts of the present won't sit still for a portrait. They are constantly vibrating, full of clutter and confusion.
The facts of the present won't sit still for a portrait. They are constantly vibrating, full of clutter and confusion.
There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate read more
There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas... that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.
We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the read more
We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more.
...there is no prescribed route to follow to arrive at a new idea. You have to make the intuitive leap. read more
...there is no prescribed route to follow to arrive at a new idea. You have to make the intuitive leap. But the difference is that once you've made the intuitive leap you have to justify it by filling in the intermediate steps. In my case, it often happens that I have an idea, but then I try to fill in the intermediate steps and find that they don't work, so I have to give it up.
Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.
Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.
For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If read more
For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If you hit a tuning fork twice as hard it will ring twice as loud but still at the same frequency. That's a linear response. If you hit a person twice as hard they're unlikely just to shout twice as loud. That property lets you learn more about the person than the tuning fork. - When Things Start to Think, 1999.