Quote Of The Week

Quote of the Week 28 “ Time is but memory in the making. ” ― Vladimir Nabokov As cited in  Recursion by Blake Crouch. Context as provided in Nabokov's interview with BBC-2 in 1969: Let me quote a paragraph in my book Ada : " Physiologically the sense of Time is a sense of continuous becoming. . . . Philosophically , on the other hand, Time is but memory in the making. In every individual life there goes on, from cradle to deathbed, the gradual shaping and strengthening of that backbone of consciousness, which is the Time of the strong." This is Van speaking, Van Veen, the charming villain of mv book. I have not decided yet if I agree with him in all his view's on the texture of time. I suspect I don't.   See  Restoration of time: Henry Bergson and Vladimir Nabokov  for an exploration of Nabokov's notion of time, viewing it through the lens of Henri Bergson ’s philosophy. According to Nabokov “time is essentially memory in th...

Quote of the Week 27 “A man's truth is, first and foremost, what he hides. ” ― André Malraux Original ( Antimémoires , 1967 , pg. 16): “La vérité d'un homme, c'est d'abord ce qu'il cache. On  m'a  prêté  la  phrase  d'un  de  mes  personnages :  « L'homme  est  ce  qu'il  fait!»  Certes,  il  n'est  pas  que  cela;  et  le  personnage  répondait  à  un  autre,  qui  venait  de  dire : «Qu'est-ce qu'un homme? Un misérable petit tas de secrets ...»”     This paraphrases a line of dialogue from his own earlier work ( Les Noyers de l'Altenburg , 1943) :  “ Essentially, a person is what they hide : a miserable little pile of secrets. ”   Triggered by a recent  tweet : We are defined less by what we show the world, and more by what we hide from it. pic.twitter.com/sb7DLDcA1E — Dr Pooja Garg (@poojagarg1111) June 21, 202...

Quote of the Week 26 “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.  Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. ” ―  Ralph Waldo Emerson   Triggered by a recent tweet : "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself." | Ralph Waldo Emerson — Philosophy Thoughts (@Philosophy_DQ) June 6, 2026 Source : Self-Reliance  (final sentences) from  Essays: First Series (1841) Initial quote   therein - originally by Aulus Persius Flaccus : “Ne te quaesiveris extra. ” (Do not seek for things outside of yourself)      

Quote of the Week 25 “ To be is to be perceived (or to perceive). ” ― George Berkeley   The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarizes:   A mind-independent thing is something whose existence is not dependent on thinking/perceiving things, and thus would exist whether or not any thinking things (minds) existed. Berkeley holds that there are no such mind-independent things, that, in the famous phrase, esse est percipi (aut percipere) — to be is to be perceived (or to perceive) .     Triggered by the following question in the book " Dark Matter " by Blake Crouch :       Note: In 1935 Erwin Schrödinger proposed a thought experiment concerning quantum superposition known as " Schrödinger's Cat " that asks whether reality itself exists in a definite state before we look. According to  Schrödinger’s Cat: The Paradox That Redefined Reality ,  Schrödinger’s point was not that he believed cats could be both alive and dead—but that the quant...

Quote of the Week 24 “The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. ” ― Albert Einstein   Triggered by   François Chollet 's tweet : See also: https://t.co/pYUVXoRwvP — Peter Lipps (@pelimuc) May 29, 2026   For background see:  Einstein on The Essential Feature of Productive Thought , fs.blog,  Farnam Street Media Inc.   (A) The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought.  The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be “voluntarily” reproduced and combined. There is, of course, a certain connection between those elements and relevant logical concepts. It is also clear that the desire to arrive finally at logically connected concepts is the emotional basis of this rather vague play with the above-mentioned elements. But taken from a psychol...

2nd Quote of the Week 22 “AI is the anthropomorphium of the people. ” ― Alan Bipe Triggered by several discussions about the (future) impact of AI on society.

Quote of the Week 22 “There is nothing more abstract than the visible. ” ― Giorgio Morandi Also quoted as “Nothing is more abstract than reality. ” Triggered by a visit to the “ Metafisica ” exhibition in Milano. “I believe that nothing can be more abstract, more unreal, than what we actually see. We know that all we can see of the objective world, as human beings, never really exists as we see and understand it. Matter exists, of course, but has no intrinsic meaning of its own, such as the meaning that we attach to it. We can know only that a cup is a cup, that a tree is a tree.” Source: After The Art Natura morta con intelligenza artificiale

3rd Quote of the Week 21 “O nce you reach the top, there's nowhere to go but down.” ― Mauro Corona Alternative translation : “ From the summit, there’s nowhere to go but down.” Triggered by the use of another Mauro Corona quote here:  BUSIE di Moreno Togni “ Dalla vetta non si va in nessun posto, si può solo scendere.” ― Mauro Corona ( " Nel legno e nella pietra ") “ Vom Gipfel aus geht man nirgendwo hin, man kann nur absteigen.”

Quote of the Week 21 “Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain. ” ― Bob Dylan (" Not Dark Yet ", song lyrics)      

Quote of the Week 20 “ The map is not the territory. ” ―  Alfred Korzybski   Triggered b y the growing gap between how things are described and how they actually are . Well, actually triggered by a road trip through the alps.   See also:  various quotes on perception vs. reality .   Quote of the Week 6/2020 " All models are wrong, but some models are useful. " ― George Box  

Quote of the Week 19 “ Doubt everything. ” ― Karl Marx   (his motto : " De omnibus dubitandum " by René Descartes ) “ An allem ist zu zweifeln. ” Triggered by the i nscription on the sidewalk of my & his native town  across the street of his  birthplace .

Quote of the Week 18 “ Dear Stone, I win. ” ― Paper Triggered by the use of the quote in Ronen Steinke‘s book „ Meinungsfreiheit “. Original wording: “ Dear Rock, I win. ” ― Paper

Quote of the Week 17 “ The future's uncertain, and the end is always near.” ―  The Doors , Roadhouse Blues (Lyrics) “Let it roll, baby, roll,  Let it roll, baby, roll,  Let it roll, baby, roll,  Let it roll, all night long.”

Quote of the Week 16 “ Nothing is swifter than rumor.” ―    Titus Livius  ( Livy ) Inspired by  A. Paul Weber's  Das Gerücht  -  interpreted in Keith Haring style: Related: “ A  lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on. ”

Quote of the Week 15 “ You can see AI everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” ― inspired by  Robert Solow ( Productivity Paradox rephrased) Triggered by Jon Hartley 's tweet : It also seems to be the case that AI adoption, while causing significant productivity changes in certain sectors, isn't showing up in macro productivity numbers yet. To rephrase Bob Solow: "You can see AI everywhere but in the productivity statistics." https://t.co/eUFx77EL1G — Jon Hartley (@Jon_Hartley_) March 27, 2026 Original quote: “ You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” ― Robert Solow