#incapable

The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion. ↗

— Henry Steele Commager

#censorship #creates #defeats #discretion #end

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood. ↗

— Soren Kierkegaard

#concepts #histories #homesickness #incapable #individuals

A few years after I gave some lectures for the freshmen at Caltech (which were published as the Feynman Lectures on Physics), I received a long letter from a feminist group. I was accused of being anti-women because of two stories: the first was a discussion of the subtleties of velocity, and involved a woman driver being stopped by a cop. There's a discussion about how fast she was going, and I had her raise valid objections to the cop's definitions of velocity. The letter said I was making the women look stupid. The other story they objected to was told by the great astronomer Arthur Eddington, who had just figured out that the stars get their power from burning hydrogen in a nuclear reaction producing helium. He recounted how, on the night after his discovery, he was sitting on a bench with his girlfriend. She said, "Look how pretty the stars shine!" To which he replied, "Yes, and right now, I'm the only man in the world who knows how they shine." He was describing a kind of wonderful loneliness you have when you make a discovery. The letter claimed that I was saying a women is incapable of understanding nuclear reactions. I figured there was no point in trying to answer their accusations in detail, so I wrote a short letter back to them: "Don't bug me, Man! ↗

— Richard P. Feynman

#deep-thoughts #humor-inspirational #ignorance #ignoring-issues #incapable-of-interpreted

For if God is a title of the highest power, He must be incorruptible, perfect, incapable of suffering, and subject to no other being; therefore they are not gods whom necessity compels to obey the one greatest God. ↗

— Lactantius

#compels #god #gods #greatest #highest

If the machinery for distribution in the present economic system of the world is incapable of properly distributing the productive wealth of nations, then that system is false and must be altered. ↗

— Gregor Strasser

#distributing #distribution #economic #economic system #false

Some people, however long their experience or strong their intellect, are temperamentally incapable of reaching firm decisions. ↗

— James Callaghan

#experience #firm #however #incapable #intellect

You're an actor, are you? Well, all that means is: you are irresponsible, irrational, romantic, and incapable of handling an adult emotion or a universal concept without first reducing it to something personal, material, sensational - and probably sexual! ↗

— George Herman

#adult #concept #emotion #first #handling

Be thou incapable of change in that which is right, and men will rely upon thee. Establish unto thyself principles of action; and see that thou ever act according to them. First know that thy principles are just, and then be thou. ↗

— Akhenaton

#act #action #change #establish #ever

This great misfortune - to be incapable of solitude. ↗

— Jean de la Bruyere

#incapable #misfortune #solitude

The novel is the highest form of human expression so far attained. Why? Because it is so incapable of the absolute. ↗

— David Herbert Lawrence

#attained #because #expression #far #form