A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: ‚Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?‘
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question – such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, ‚Can you read?‘ – not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have had.
– C.P. Snow (Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution)
„Eisenwerkzeuge und ausgeprägt warmes Klima – im Mittel 3 Grad wärmer als heute – trugen zu einer enormen Steigerung landwirtschaftlicher Produktivität bei…“
„We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, „Oh, nothing!““
„Schroffe Felswände, deren Firne monatelang mit Schnee bedeckt sind und die sich über dem Meer oder über heißen Ebenen erheben, wo Rosen und Orangenbäume blühen; Steilhänge, die oft direkt ins Meer abfallen – diese klassischen Landschaften finden sich an allen Enden des Mittelmeeres wieder, beinahe austauschbar. Wer wollte von sich behaupten, er vermöge die Küste Dalmatiens, die Sardiniens und die südspanische in der Umgebung von Gibraltar auf den ersten Blick zu unterscheiden? Wer könnte da jeden Irrtum ausschließen? Und doch sind diese Küsten Hunderte von Kilometern voneinander entfernt.
– Fernand Braudel (Die Welt des Mittelmeeres – Zur Geschichte und Geographie kultureller Lebensformen)
First Minister Lord North schrieb dem König Georg III.
(The First Minister should be) „a man of great abilities, and who is confident of his abilities, who can choose decisively, and carry his determination authoritatively into execution… and be capable of forming wise plans and of combining and connecting the whole force and operations of government. — I am certainly not such a man.“
„Three outstanding attitudes – obliviousness to the growing disaffection of constituents, primacy of self-aggrandizement , illusion of invulnerable status – are persistent aspects of folly. While in the case of the Renaissance popes, these were bred in and exaggerated by the surrounding culture, all are independent of time and recurrent in governorship.“
(Barbara W. Tuchman, ‚The March of Folly – From Troy to Vietnam‘)
In the One undivided and indivisible Ocean of life, you have, through ignorance, created the pernicious divisions based upon sex, race, nationality, religion and community. And you allow these self-created divisions to poison your heart and obstruct your relationships. Slowly but surely you must shed prejudices and get disentangled from the superficial distinctions. You have to play a role in the drama of creation, without being caught up in duality. The unity of life has to be experienced and expressed in the very midst of its diverse experiences. All life is One, and all divisions are imaginary.
„Nothing is More Unfair than to Judge the Men of the Past by the Ideas of the Present.“
(Denys Arthur Winstanley)
gefunden in „The March of Folly – From Troy to Vietnam“ von Barbara W. Tuchman
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