#hem

There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and obscurities...more worthy to express the invariable relations of all natural things [than mathematics]. [It interprets] all phenomena by the same language, as if to attest the unity and simplicity of the plan of the universe, and to make still more evident that unchangeable order which presides over all natural causes ↗

— Joseph Fourier

#mathematics #religion #science #nature

[On Female Attraction to Men in Uniform] That male military persona feeds a subconscious, passive-aggressive female desire to dominate the warrior as he is perceived an iconic example of masculinity (particularly amongst traditionally warlike cultures). The damsel in distress theme always struck me as embodying this: the hapless, innocently beautiful woman unwittingly enraptures the heroic male so completely that he would risk all to submit to her at his own peril, and quite in spite of it. ↗

— Tiffany Madison

#literature #military-theory #passive-aggressive #romantic-themes #warrior

RAND scientists tried to tell their wives that the decision whether to buy or not to buy a washing machine was an 'optimization problem'. ↗

— Sylvia Nasar

#beauty

You like all animals at that moment, although no doubt you will one day choose your favorites. Your own nature will triumph. We are all born with our natures. You popped out of your mother’s belly, I saw your eyes, and I knew that you were already you. And I think back over my own life and I realize that my own nature--the core me--essentially hasn’t changed over all these years. When I wake up in the morning, for those first few moments before I remember where I am or when I am, I still feel the same way I did when I woke up at the age of five. Sometimes I wonder if natures can be changed at all of if we are stuck with them as surely as a dog wants bones or as a cat chases mice. ↗

— Douglas Coupland

#age

Everything, decided Francie after that first lecture, was vibrant with life adn there was no death in chemistry. She was puzzled as to why learned people didn't adopt chemistry as a religion. ↗

— Betty Smith

#life #religion #death

Increasingly, the mathematics will demand the courage to face its implications. ↗

— Michael Crichton

#courage

Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children. In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous. ↗

— Robert Higgs

#anarchy #chaos #genocide #government #killing

Science is not about making predictions or performing experiments. Science is about explaining. ↗

— Bill Gaede

#fact #gaede #hypothesizing #mathematical-physics #prediction

A mathematician is an individual who calls himself a 'physicist' and does 'physics' and physical experiments with abstract concepts. ↗

— Bill Gaede

#peer-review #physics #science #scientific-language #experience

...I put you on the pedestal - made you a saint - dare I blaspheme?... ↗

— John Geddes

#blaspheme #love #saint #worship #love