The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
—B.F. Skinner, 1969
Archive
Quotes
The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit has made permanent.
—Marcel Proust, 1919I curse the night, yet doth from day me hide.
—William Drummond, 1616I always think of nature as a great spectacle, somewhat resembling the opera.
—Bernard de Fontenelle, 1686The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.
—John Updike, 1963War is fear cloaked in courage.
—William Westmoreland, 1966Nature contains no one constant form.
—Paul-Henri Dietrich d’Holbach, 1770Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea? How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.
—Sydney Smith, 1855The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
—L.P. Hartley, 1953One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
—E.B. White, 1958The past is always tense and the future, perfect.
—Zadie Smith, 2000How sweet it is to have people point and say, “There he is.”
—Persius, c. 60I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1855