"If you learn one thing from having lived through decades of changing views, it is that all predictions are necessarily false."

M. H. Abrams Literature See all quotes by M. H. Abrams →

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“When something startlingly new comes up, young people, especially, seize it. You can't complain about that.”

“John Updike is always fun. And one of my former students, Tom Pynchon. I like to read Archie Ammons, my great friend. And Harold Bloom, another former student.”

“The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves.”

“The survival of artistic modes in which we recognize ourselves, identify ourselves and place ourselves will survive as long as humanity survives.”

“If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.”

“I think most of the things I published have been published out of desperation, not because they were perfected.”

Resonant Thoughts

"The concept of centroid as sum led me to examine Möbius' Barycentrische Calcul, a work of which until then I knew only the title; and I was not little pleased to find here the same concept of the summ…"

— Hermann Grassmann

Mathematics1809–1877

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"We live in the age of Noah in the sense that a flood of distraction accosts us. It is a slow and subtle drowning. For those who notice it, they engage in the remembrance of God. The rites of worship a…"

— Hamza Yusuf

Science1958

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"When, where, and how were you, Joseph Smith, first called? How old were you? and what were you qualifications? I was between fourteen and fifteen years of age. Had you been to college? No. Had you stu…"

— Orson Pratt

Mathematics1811–1881

#knowledge