I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That’s what life is.
We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.
A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
I remember when I was a freshman in college, I was still somewhat bothered by… worried… about religion. I remember going to this professor of philosophy and telling him that I had lost my faith.
The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he’s often sure he can find one. And that’s a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.
Once in a while a new government initiates a program to put power to better use, but its success or failure never really proves anything. In science, experiments are designed, checked, altered, repeated– but not in politics… We have no real cumulative knowledge. History tells us nothing. That’s the tragedy of a political reformer.
The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he’s often sure he can find one. And that’s a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.