#mati

I like to go on the court and have a little bit of information about my opponent. ↗

— Mary Pierce

#bit #court #go #i #information

What is so remarkable about the success of affirmative action is that it has been accomplished despite the Justice Department and the policies of the federal government. ↗

— Harold Washington

#accomplished #action #affirmative #affirmative action #been

Healthy debate has been replaced by automatic sensors that eliminate the need for actual talking during a filibuster - a la 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.' Robust debate is necessary in a democratic society. Instead, our discourse has been relegated to media spin by expert entertainers. ↗

— Douglas Wilder

#automatic #been #debate #democratic #democratic society

Mathematicians aren't satisfied because they know there are no solutions up to four million or four billion, they really want to know that there are no solutions up to infinity. ↗

— Andrew Wiles

#billion #four #infinity #know #mathematicians

I'm sure that some of them will be very hard and I'll have a sense of achievement again, but nothing will mean the same to me - there's no other problem in mathematics that could hold me the way that this one did. ↗

— Andrew Wiles

#again #could #did #hard #hold

In all her history, from the formation of the federal government until the hour of secession, no year stands out more prominently than the year 1858 as evidencing the national patriotism of Virginia. ↗

— John Sergeant Wise

#federal government #formation #government #her #history

See the exquisite contrast of the types of mind! The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases, and generalises. Truth, for him, becomes a class-name for all sorts of definite working-values in experience. For the rationalist it remains a pure abstraction, to the bare name of which we must defer. When the pragmatist undertakes to show in detail just why we must defer, the rationalist is unable to recognise the concretes from which his own abstraction is taken. He accuses us of denying truth; whereas we have only sought to trace exactly why people follow it and always ought to follow it. Your typical ultra-abstractions fairly shudders at concreteness: other things equal, he positively prefers the pale and spectral. If the two universes were offered, he would always choose the skinny outline rather than the rich thicket of reality. It is so much purer, clearer, nobler. ↗

— William James

#philosophy #pragmatism #rationalism #truth #equality

Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms? ↗

— William James

#philosophy #pragmatism #experience

It was only high school after all, definitely one of the most bizarre periods in a person’s life. How anyone can come through that time well adjusted on any level is an absolute miracle. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#bullies #experiences #growing-up #high-school #high-school-kids

I warned myself against the danger of compassion in this case. How easy it would be to imagine the traumas of childhood that might have deformed her into the moral monster she had become, and then to convince myself that those traumas could be balanced - and their effects reversed - by sufficient acts of kindness. ↗

— Dean Koontz

#kindness #monsters #traumatic-experiences #experience