Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.
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His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it. You appear to be astonished, he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it. To forget it! You see, he explained, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. But the Solar System! I protested. What the deuce is it to me? he interrupted impatiently: you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.
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Because systems of mass communication can communicate only officially acceptable levels of reality, no one can know the extent of the secret unconscious life. No one in America can know what will happen. No one is in real control.
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Temperament lies behind mood; behind will, lies the fate of character. Then behind both, the influence of family the tyranny of culture; and finally the power of climate and environment; and we are free, only to the extent we rise above these.
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Socrates famously said that the unconsidered life is not worth living. He meant that a life lived without forethought or principle is a life so vulnerable to chance, and so dependent on the choices and actions of others, that it is of little real value to the person living it. He further meant that a life well lived is one which has goals, and integrity, which is chosen and directed by the one who lives it, to the fullest extent possible to a human agent caught in the webs of society and history.
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The car as we know it is on the way out. To a large extent, I deplore its passing, for as a basically old-fashioned machine, it enshrines a basically old-fashioned idea: freedom. In terms of pollution, noise and human life, the price of that freedom may be high, but perhaps the car, by the very muddle and confusion it causes, may be holding back the remorseless spread of the regimented, electronic society.
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Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
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We have come through a strange cycle in programming, starting with the creation of programming itself as a human activity. Executives with the tiniest smattering of knowledge assume that anyone can write a program, and only now are programmers beginning to win their battle for recognition as true professionals. Not just anyone, with any background, or any training, can do a fine job of programming. Programmers know this, but then why is it that they think that anyone picked off the street can do documentation? One has only to spend an hour looking at papers written by graduate students to realize the extent to which the ability to communicate is not universally held. And so, when we speak about computer program documentation, we are not speaking about the psychology of computer programming at all - except insofar as programmers have the illusion that anyone can do a good job of documentation, provided he is not smart enough to be a programmer.
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To some extent I liken slavery to death.
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The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose.
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The true greatness of a nation is not measured by the vastness of its territory, or by the multitude of its people, or by the profusion of its exports and imports; but by the extent to which it has contributed to the life and thought and progress of the world. A man's greatness is not estimated by the size of his body or of his purse; not by his family connections or social position, however high these may be. He may bulk large in public estimation today, but tomorrow he will be forgotten like a dream, and his very servants may secure a higher position and a name lasting possibly a little longer. A man's greatness is estimated by his influence, not over the votes and empty cheers of a changing and passing crowd, but by his abiding, inspiring influence in their bidden thoughts, upon their ways of thinking, and consequently of acting. That is why the Wycliffes, Shakespeares, Miltons, Newtons, Wesleys, and Gladstones of English history live, and will live, in everlasting memory, while lesser men are remembered only through them, and the crowd of demagogues, pretenders, and self-seekers are named, if ever named, only to point a moral, or adorn a tale. So with nations. A great nation is not one which, like Russia, has an enormous territory ; or, like China, has an enormous population. It is the nation which gives mankind new modes of thought, new ideals of life, new hopes, new aspirations; which lifts the world out of the rut, and sets it going on a cleaner and brighter road.
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Sublimation of instinct is an especially conspicuous feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an important part in civilized life. If one were to yield to a first impression, one would say that sublimation is a vicissitude which has been forced upon the instincts entirely by civilization. But it would be wiser to reflect upon this a little longer. In the third place, finally, and this seems the most important of all, it is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instinct, how much it presupposes precisely the non-satisfaction (by suppression, repression or some other means?) of powerful instincts. This ââ?¬Ë?cultural frustrationââ?¬â?¢ dominates the large field of social relationships between human beings;we know already that it is the cause of the antagonism against which all civilization has to fight.
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Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.
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The Depth of your Mythology is the Extent of your Effectiveness.
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There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.
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The very fact that companion animals are so highly regarded raises difficult issues for agricultural and performance animal doctors. Some of these animals are not markedly different in their mental capacities from many companion animals. At a time the profession seeks to promote companion animals as members of the family, to what extent must it also advocate the interests of its food, farm, and performance animal patients?. . . Nevertheless, discussions devoid of attention to animal interests are appearing with frequency in the literature espousing the model of the veterinarian as herd health consultant.
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It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.
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They (the animals) have very positive rights because they are God’s creatures. If we have to speak with absolute accuracy we must say that God has the right to have all His creatures treated with proper respect. Nobody should therefore carelessly repeat the old saying that animals have no rights. This could easily lead to wanton cruelty … The difficulty is that many people do not realise the extent to which cruelty to animals is practised as a matter of business … The best and most experienced teachers … talk of kindness to animals. Christians have a duty not only to refrain from doing harm but also to do positive good.
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The extent to which he used the State of the Union to launch and define the 'ownership society' concept is important because if you take it to its natural extreme, the ownership society would essentially replace the 'Great Society. That's a major shift from where we've been.
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I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.
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Just like those other black holes from outer space, Hollywood is postmodern to this extent: it has no center, only a spreading dead zone of exhaustion, inertia, and brilliant decay.
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The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him. He is able, to a certain extent, to communicate his misery. He frightens other people as much as they frighten him. He acts like a damper upon the whole room, and the most jovial spirits become, in his presence, depressed and nervous.
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Part of the power of Emerson's individualism is his insistence, at crucial moments, that individualism does not mean isolation or self-sufficiency. This is not a paradox, for it is only the strong individual who can frankly concede the sometimes surprising extent of his own dependence.
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In the South where slavery still exists, the Negroes are less carefully kept apart they sometimes share the labors and the recreations of the whites the whites consent to intermix with them to a certain extent, and although legislation treats them more harshly, the habits of the people are more tolerant and compassionate.
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My fate cannot be mastered it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul I am only its noisiest passenger.
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We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dream life.
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The real community of man, in the midst of all the self-contraditory simulacra of community, is the community of those who seek the truth, of potential knowers... of all men to the extent that they know.
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Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.
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We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.
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Perhaps there are somewhere in the infinite universe beings whose minds outrank our minds to the same extent as our minds surpass those of the insects. Perhaps there will once somewhere live beings who will look upon us with the same condescension as we look upon amoebae.
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