By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.
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There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to the page, a gossamer web. They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them, a string of squiggles. Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted, as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into concrete classical entities-- potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved geometry-- that was a sublime experience. The iron fist of the real, inside the velvet glove of airy mathematics.
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You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.
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If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skulls, then why do we read it Good God, we also would be happy if we had no books and such books that make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. What we must have are those books that come on us like ill fortune, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us.
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'Your chances of getting hit by lightning go up if you stand under a tree, shake your fist at the sky and say 'Storms suck!'.
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Leadership in today's world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table.
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You can't shake hands with a clenched fist
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My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today I knew it then as purpose.
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My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.
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When you are in a state of nonacceptance, it's difficult to learn. A clenched fist cannot receive a gift, and a clenched psyche grasped tightly against the reality of what must not be accepted cannot easily receive a lesson.
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The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins
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The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.
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Never hit a man with glasses; hit him with your fist.
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