Quotes
Los desastrosos resultados obtenidos por un país gobernado durante ocho décadas por dos grupos políticos fuertemente nacionalistas deberían hacer sospechosa la idea primitiva de que, cuanto más nacionalista es un país, más prometedor es su futuro.
Fernando Iglesias, La cuestión Malvinas: crítica del nacionalismo argentino, Buenos Aires, 2012, p. 21
A meaningul relationship between two people cannot sustain itself only in the present tense.
Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, New York, 2011, p. 74
As an industry, it may not yet be as big as oil, but it is older, will last longer, and is vastly more profitable. To profit from oil you have to find it, transport it, refine it and sell it. To profit from psychic readings, you just talk to people and they give you money. And whereas the world will one day run out of oil, it will never run out of people wanting a psychic reading.
Ian Rowland, The full facts book of cold reading, 2019, p. 9
Aquella noche en Salón Canning, mientras el DJ insistía con Fresedo y no pasaba ni un tema de Pugliese, don Samuel, ochenta años cumplidos, no perdonaba un solo tango. Con su traje marrón y el inamovible, informe sombrero del mismo color, invitaba a cuanta rubia lo superase ampliamente en altura. En otra ocasión yo lo había invitado a una copa y, sin aludir a su escasa estatura, le pregunté por esa predilección; creo que observé algo así como que no les tenía miedo a las escandinavas. Me respondió con la sonrisa generosa de quien transmite su experiencia de la vida a la generación siguiente.
–Pibe, no hay nada como tener la cabeza empotrada entre un par de buenas tetas.
Edgardo Cozarinsky, Milongas, Buenos Aires, 2007, p. 16
What /must /be done, Sir, /will /be done.
Samuel Johnson, Life of Mr Richard Savage, London, 1744, p. 108
The opinion that a belief in immortality is logically indefensible gains strength, paradoxical as it may seem, from the very fact that most of the western world desire that the belief may be true.
J. Ellis McTaggart, Some considerations relating to human immortality, The international journal of ethics, vol. 13, no. 2, 1903, pp. 152–171, p. 170
Mientras otros cumplen con rigor un tanto burocrático las tareas intelectuales en que se hallan empeñados y luego, al término del cotidiano deber, buscan descanso en el cinematógrafo, en la tertulia o en la novela trivial, Borges mantiene activo el espíritu en todas las circunstancias. Prolonga en el plano del diálogo ameno las operaciones mentales que lo llevaron a escribir un poema o a examinar los méritos de un libro. No es dable señalar distingos entre su quehacer literario y el tono general de su vida.
Carlos Mastronardi, Borges, Buenos Aires, 2007, p. 41
Un monde où le mal es la conditio sine qua non du bien, est un mauvais monde.
Arthur Schopenhauer, Der handschriftliche Nachlaß, München, 1985, p. 104
Nothing is true merely because it is good. Nothing is good merely because it is true. To argue that a thing must be because it ought to be is the last and worst degree of spiritual rebellion–claiming for our ideals the reality of fact. To argue, on the other hand, that a thing must be good because it is true, is the last and worst degree of spiritual servility, which ignores the right and the duty inherent in our possession of ideas–the right and the duty to judge and, if necessary, to condemn the whole universe by the highest standard we can find in our own nature.
J. Ellis McTaggart, The necessity of dogma, International journal of ethics, vol. 5, no. 2, 1895, pp. 147, p. 150
Una noche del año 25 sale Borges, con un grupo de amigos, de cierta fiesta a la que fueron invitados por una joven escritora. Mientras celebran la amenidad de la reunión y la belleza de la dueña de casa, ganan lentamente la soledad y la sombra. Uno de los incipientes poetas que acompañan a Borges, mientras orina junto a un árbol, dice que le gustaría describir de modo preciso y realista todos los vaivenes de la reunión, y también la esplendorosa persona de la dama que los había congregado. Borges acepta y completa esa aspiración literaria:
Para no omitir ningún aspecto de la realidad, debemos hacer mención de este momento… Conviene tener en cuenta todo lo que hacemos ahora… También esta prosaica ceremonia depurativa es parte del mundo… También estos orines están en el universo.
Carlos Mastronardi, Borges, Buenos Aires, 2007, p. 106
Pain is an evil–all our morality implies that. Even if we have a right to forgive the universe our own pain–and I doubt if we have the right to do even this–we have certainly no right to forgive it the pain of others. We must either believe the pain inflicted for some good purpose, or condemn the universe in which it occurs.
J. Ellis McTaggart, The necessity of dogma, International journal of ethics, vol. 5, no. 2, 1895, pp. 147, p. 156
[I]n my first Voyage from Boston, being becalm’d off Block Island, our People set about catching Cod and hawl’d up a grat many. Hitherto I had stuck to my Resolution of not eating animal Food; and on this Occasion I consider’d with my Master Tryon, the taking every Fish a kind of unprovok’d Murder, since none of them had or ever could do us any Injury that might justify the Slaughter.– All this seem’d very reasonable.–But I had formerly been a great Lover of Fish, and when this came hot out of the Frying Pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanc’d some time between Principle and Inclination: till I recollected, that when the Fish were opened, I saw smaller Fish taken out of their Stomachs: Then thought I, if you eat one another, I don’t see why we mayn’t eat you. So I din’d upon Cod very heartily and continu’d to eat with other People, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable Diet. So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for every thing one has a mind to do.–
Benjamin Franklin, Franklin: The autobiography and other writings on politics, economics, and virtue, Cambridge, 2004
No living man, or living men, shall stop me, only death can prevent me. But death–not even this; I shall not die, I will not die, I cannot die!
Henry M. Stanley, How I found Livingstone: travels, adventures, and discoveries in Central Africa ; including four months' residence with Dr. Livingstone, Amsterdam, 1872, p. 9
Since, in order to survive, we must be able to move about effectively, perception must to a certain degree achieve stable and veridical representations. It must tell us how matters stand out there. But the universe is in constant flux. We move about and other things also move. Day turns into night. Sound sources approach and recede. How can perceptual stability be achieved in the face of the ongoing flux?
We can perhaps formulate a better question by asking what aspect of the universe most needs stability. For example, is it the differences or the proportions and ratios that need to remain constant in perception? Apparently it is the proportions—the ratios. When we walk toward a house, the relative proportions of the house appear to remain constant: the triangular gable looks triangular from almost any distance. A photograph portrays the same picture whether we view it under a bright or a dim light: the ration between the light and the shaded parts of the photograph seems approximately the same even though the illumination varies. The perceived relations among the sounds of speech remain the same whether the speech is soft or highly amplified. In other words, the perceptual domain operates as though it had its own ratio requirement—not a mathematically rigid requirement, as in physics, but a practical and approximate requirement.
The usefulness of perceptual proportions and relations that remain approximately constant despite wide changes in stimulus levels is immense. Think how life as we know it would be transformed if speech could be understood at only a single level of intensity, or if objects changed their apparent proportions as they receded, or if pictures became unrecognizable when a cloud dimmed the light of the sun.
By making the perceived aspects o stimuli depend on power functions of the stimulus dimensions, nature has contrived an operating mechanism that is compatible with the need for reasonable stability among perceptual relations.
S. S. Stevens, Psychophysics: introduction to its perceptual, neural, and social prospects, New York, 1975, pp. 18-19
The more quickly people reach an understanding of negative events, the sooner they recover from them. […] Virtually all tests […], however, have examined people’s understanding of negative events. The AREA [attend, react, explain, and adapt] model is unique in predicting that explanation also leads to the diminution of affective reactions to positive events. We predict that anything that impedes explanation—such as uncertainty—should prolong affective reactions to positive events. […] These studies highlight a pleasure paradox, which refers to the fact that people have two fundamental motives—to understand the world and to maintain positive emotion—that are sometimes at odds.
Timothy D. Wilson and Daniel T. Gilbert, Explaining away: A model of affective adaptation, Perspectives on Psychological Science, vol. 3, no. 5, 2008, pp. 370–386, pp. 377-378
Schopenhauer makes two curiously inconsistent claims about the wretchedness of human existence. We can object, he claims, both that our lives are filled with suffering which makes them worse than nothing, and that time passes so swiftly that we shall soon be dead. These are like Woody Allen’s two complaints about his hotel: ‘The food is terrible, and they serve such small portions!’
Derek Parfit, On what matters, Oxford, 2011, p. 615
There is a great deal of misery in the world, and many of us could easily spend our lives trying to eradicate it. […] [O]ne advantage of living in a world as bad as this one is that it offers the opportunity for many activities whose importance can’t be questioned. But how could the main point of human life be the elimination of evil? Misery, deprivation, and injustice prevent people from pursuing the positive goods which life is assumed to make possible. If all such goods were pointless and the only thing that really mattered was the elimination of misery, that really /would /be absurd.
Thomas Nagel, The view from nowhere, Oxford, 1986, p. 217
The art of pleasing is a very necessary one to possess; but a very difficult one to acquire. It can hardly be reduced to rules; and your own good sense and observation will teach you more of it than I can. Do as you would be done by, is the surest method that I know of pleasing. Observe carefully what pleases you in others, and probably the same thing in you will please others. If you are pleased with the complaisance and attention of others to your humors, your tastes, or your weaknesses, depend upon it the same complaisance and attention, on your part to theirs, will equally please them. Take the tone of the company that you are in, and do not pretend to give it; be serious, gay, or even trifling, as you find the present humor of the company; this is an attention due from every individual to the majority. Do not tell stories in company; there is nothing more tedious and disagreeable; if by chance you know a very short story, and exceedingly applicable to the present subject of conversation, tell it in as few words as possible; and even then, throw out that you do not love to tell stories; but that the shortness of it tempted you. Of all things, banish the egotism out of your conversation, and never think of entertaining people with your own personal concerns, or private, affairs; though they are interesting to you, they are tedious and impertinent to everybody else; besides that, one cannot keep one’s own private affairs too secret. Whatever you think your own excellencies may be, do not affectedly display them in company; nor labor, as many people do, to give that turn to the conversation, which may supply you with an opportunity of exhibiting them. If they are real, they will infallibly be discovered, without your pointing them out yourself, and with much more advantage. Never maintain an argument with heat and clamor, though you think or know yourself to be in the right: but give your opinion modestly and coolly, which is the only way to convince; and, if that does not do, try to change the conversation, by saying, with good humor, “We shall hardly convince one another, nor is it necessary that we should, so let us talk of something else.”
Philip Dormer Stanhope, Letter to his son, London, 16 October O.S. 1747, Project Gutenberg, October 16, 1747
Quantities of pain or pleasure may be regarded as magnitudes having the same definiteness as tons of pig iron, barrels of sugar, bushels of wheat, yards of cotton, or pounds of wool; and as political economy seeks to ascertain the conditions under which these commodities may be produced with the greatest efficiency–so the economy of happiness seeks to ascertain the conditions under which happiness, regarded as a commodity, may be produced with the greatest efficiency.
James MacKaye, The Economy of Happiness, Boston, 1906, p. 183-184
‘Humanity’ does not exist. There are only humans, driven by conflicting needs and illusions, and subject to every kind of infirmity of will and judgement.
John Gray, Straw dogs: Thoughts on humans and other animals, London, 2002, p. 12