March 19, 2009
- Quotes -
I’ve been listening to The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynman and also reading The Quest for Wilhelm Reich by Colin Wilson. There’s been some really good quotes in them both that kind of pertain to some stuff I’ve been exploring here lately, so I thought’s I’d type them up:
“Neurosis is basically a strain between the rational self and the instinctive self, with the rational self continuously interfering with the natural flow of instinctive activity. It can be caused by any type of anxiety that leads the rational self to over-react” – Colin Wilson on Wilhelm Reich (p 119)
“Such is the perversity of human nature that we seem to experience our freedom only when it is threatened; in circumstances where we ought to feel happy, we often to look around for minor anxieties to occupy our attention. And this odd preference for anxiety underlies a basic characteristic of human nature: that we operate at maximum efficiency only when we are loaded down by a certain weight - of interest, of responsibility, even of anxiety. This is only to say that man is basically a purposive animal; a man without a strong sense of purpose does not become neurotic. A man without a sense of purpose is likely to become neurotic even if he has no real problems. Any scheme for improving the human lot which merely concentrates on removing his problems will leave him dissatisfied as ever.” – Colin Wilson on Wilhelm Reich (p 119)
“You cannot expect old designs to work in new circumstances, but new designs can work in new circumstances.” – Richard Feynman
“People…are woefully, pitifully, absolutely ignorant of the science of the world that they live in. And they can stay that way. I don’t mean to say ‘the heck with them’, what I mean is that they are able to stay that way without it worrying them at all.” – Richard Feynman
“Mr. Bernardini said we shouldn’t teach wonders, but knowledge. It may be a difference in the meaning of the words, but I think we should teach wonders, and that the purpose of knowledge is to appreciate wonders even more. And that the knowledge is just to put into correct framework, the wonder that nature is” – Richard Feynman
Good quotes. I’ve got quite a lot of time for Feynman. He was a bit of a trailblazer, to be sure, but I often come across the attitude that whatever he said was the be-all-and-end-all on any given subject, which is disappointing. I always feel an undercurrent in his stuff of ‘that’s just the way it is’, which leaves me feeling unconfortable. But then he comes out with something like ‘The real wonder of science is that we can /find a way of looking/ such that the answer is obvious’ [or something like that], which is just awesome.
Comment by speedbird — March 19, 2009 @ 4:50 am
Yeah, I know what you mean about Feynman. The book I’m listening to is basically a best-of kind of thing, and most of it’s transcripts of some speeches he gave. It’s not Feynman doing the reading, but his voice definitely comes across. He had a rather singular way of using language. :)
Comment by Ian — March 19, 2009 @ 1:38 pm