There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate read more

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas... that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. read more

The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. Like faxes, computer modems and other modern gadgets that have clogged out lives with phony urgency, cell phones represent the 20th Century's escalation of imaginary need. We didn't need cell phones until we had them. Clearly, cell phones cause not only a breakdown of courtesy, but the atrophy of basic skills.

For my confirmation, I didn't get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like most Lutheran boys. I read more

For my confirmation, I didn't get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like most Lutheran boys. I got a telescope. My mother thought it would make the best gift.

Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.

Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.

It's going to be a bummer if Mars turns out to be like us.

It's going to be a bummer if Mars turns out to be like us.

Science... never solves a problem without creating ten more.

Science... never solves a problem without creating ten more.

Spending an evening on the World Wide Web is much like sitting down to a dinner of Cheetos, two hours read more

Spending an evening on the World Wide Web is much like sitting down to a dinner of Cheetos, two hours later your fingers are yellow and you're no longer hungry, but you haven't been nourished.

We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to read more

We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea at first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work.

Pentiums melt in your PC, not in your hand.

Pentiums melt in your PC, not in your hand.