Here we must make one of those inductive applications of the law of continuity which have produced such great results in all of the positive sciences. We must extend the law of insistency into the future. Plainly, the insistency of a future idea with reference to the present is a quantity affected by the minus sign; for it is the present that affects the future, if there be any effect, not the future that affects the present.
Charles Sanders PeirceRelated topics
continuity future great idea law minus present sign sciencesRelated quotes
I love to read the dedications of old books written in monarchies-for they invariably honor some (usually insignificant) knight or duke with fulsome words of sycophantic insincerity, praising him as the light of the universe (in hopes, no doubt, for a few ducats to support future work); this old practice makes me feel like such an honest and upright man, by comparison, when I put a positive spin, perhaps ever so slightly exaggerated, on a grant proposal.
Stephen Jay Gould
I have added some ploughmen to the landscape form the park pales which is a great help, but I must try and warm the picture a little more if I can... but I look to do a great deal better in future. I am determined to finish a small picture in the spot for every one I intend to make in future. But this I have always talked about but never yet done – I think however my mind is more settled and determined than ever on this point.
John Constable
In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on and uninhabited planet.
William L. Shirer
'War,' says Machiavelli, 'ought to be the only study of a prince' and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. 'He ought,' says this great political doctor, 'to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans. 'A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.
Edmund Burke
But those rare souls whose spirit gets magically into the hearts of men, leave behind them something more real and warmly personal than bodily presence, an ineffable and eternal thing. It is everlasting life touching us as something more than a vague, recondite concept. The sound of a great name dies like an echo the splendor of fame fades into nothing but the grace of a fine spirit pervades the places through which it has passed, like the haunting loveliness of mignonette.
James Thurber