User:Dan Polansky

Dan Polansky is described at Meta:User:Dan Polansky.

Formatting: Format quotes using bullet lists as per Guide to layout:
 * Quotation
 * Author, Work (Year)

Quotations
Some quotations of personal interest follow, using a custom format. I do not necessarily agree with them; they have to be interesting or inspiring enough to be included.


 * Marcus Aurelius
 * From my tutor: not to become a partisan of the Green jacket or the Blue in the races, nor of Thracian or Samnite gladiators; to bear pain and be content with little; to work with my own hands, to mind my own business, and to be slow to listen to slander.


 * Pirsig 1974
 * There's no fault isolation problem in motorcycle maintenance that can stand up to it [the scientific method]. When you've hit a really tough one, tried everything, racked your brain and nothing works, and you know that this time Nature has really decided to be difficult, you say, "Okay, Nature, that's the end of the nice guy," and you crank up the formal scientific method.


 * Pirsig 1974
 * The question why comes back again and again and has become a major reason for wanting to deliver this Chautauqua. Why did they [the motorcycle mechanics] butcher it so? These were not people running away from technology, like John and Sylvia. These were the technologists themselves. They sat down to do a job and they performed it like chimpanzees. Nothing personal in it. There was no obvious reason for it. And I tried to think back into that shop, that nightmare place, to try to remember anything that could have been the cause.


 * Pirsig 1974
 * The student's biggest problem was a slave mentality which had been built into him by years of carrot-and-whip grading, a mule mentality which said, "If you don't whip me, I won't work." He didn't get whipped. He didn't work. And the cart of civilization, which he supposedly was being trained to pull, was just going to have to creak along a little slower without him.
 * This is a tragedy, however, only if you presume that the cart of civilization, "the system," is pulled by mules. This is a common, vocational, "location" point of view, but it's not the Church [of Reason] attitude.
 * The Church attitude is that civilization, or "the system" or "society" or whatever you want to call it, is best served not by mules but by free men. The purpose of abolishing grades and degrees is not to punish mules or to get rid of them but to provide an environment in which that mule can turn into a free man.


 * Pirsig 1974
 * The best way to break this cycle, I think, is to work out your anxieties on paper. Read every book and magazine you can on the subject. Your anxiety makes this easy and the more you read the more you calm down. You should remember that it's peace of mind you're after and not just a fixed machine.


 * Pirsig 1974
 * Maybe it's just the usual late afternoon letdown, but after all I've said about all these things today I just have a feeling that I've somehow talked around the point. Some could ask, “Well, if I get around all those gumption traps, then will I have the thing licked?”
 * The answer, of course, is no, you still haven't got anything licked. You've got to live right too. It's the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That's the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn't separate from the rest of your existence. If you're a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren't working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together.
 * But if you're a sloppy thinker six days a week and you really try to be sharp on the seventh, then maybe the next six days aren't going to be quite as sloppy as the preceding six. What I'm trying to come up with on these gumption traps I guess, is shortcuts to living right. The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be “out there” and the person that appears to be “in here” are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.


 * Pirsig 1974
 * Thus the hero of the Odyssey is a great fighter, a wily schemer, a ready speaker, a man of stout heart and broad wisdom who knows that he must endure without too much complaining what the gods send; and he can both build and sail a boat, drive a furrow as straight as anyone, beat a young braggart at throwing the discus, challenge the Phaeacian youth at boxing, wrestling or running; flay, skin, cut up and cook an ox, and be moved to tears by a song. He is in fact an excellent all-rounder; he has surpassing arête.
 * Arête implies a respect for the wholeness or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialization.
 * It implies a contempt for efficiency...or rather a much higher idea of efficiency, an efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in life itself.


 * Pirsig 1974
 * Then he saw it. He brought out the knife and excised the one word that created the entire angering effect of that sentence. The word was "just." Why should Quality be just what you like? Why should "what you like" be "just"? What did "just" mean in this case? When separated out like this for independent examination it became apparent that "just" in this case really didn't mean a damn thing. It was a purely pejorative term, whose logical contribution to the sentence was nil. Now, with that word removed, the sentence became "Quality is what you like," and its meaning was entirely changed. It had become an innocuous truism.


 * Poincaré
 * Whence comes this concordance? Is it simply that the things which seem beautiful to us are those which best adapt themselves to our intelligence, and that consequently they are at the same time the implement this intelligence knows best how to use ? Or is there here a play of evolution and natural selection? Have the peoples whose ideal most conformed to their highest interest exterminated the others and taken their place? All pursued their ideals without reference to consequences, but while this quest led some to destruction, to others it gave empire.
 * One is tempted to believe it. If the Greeks triumphed over the barbarians and if Europe, heir of Greek thought, dominates the world, it is because the savages loved loud colors and the clamorous tones of the drum which occupied only their senses, while the Greeks loved the intellectual beauty which hides beneath sensuous beauty, and that this intellectual beauty it is which makes intelligence sure and strong.


 * Poincaré
 * To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.


 * Russell:
 * The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.


 * Russell (or merely attributed to him)
 * Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.


 * Jobs or Siltanen:
 * Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.


 * Viktor Frankl, from memory (I cannot find the passage):
 * We who have been there (in the concentration camp) know: the best did not survive.


 * Karl Popper
 * The method of trial and error is not, of course, simply identical with the scientific and critical approach--with the method of conjecture and refutation. The method of trial and error is applied not only by Einstein but, in a more dogmatic fashion, by the amoeba also. The difference lies not so much in the trials as in the critical and constructive attitude towards errors; errors which the scientist consciously and cautiously tries to uncover in order to refute his theories with searching arguments, including appeals to the most severe experimental tests which his theories and his ingenuity permit him to design.
 * The critical attitude might be described as the result of a conscious attempt to make our theories, our conjectures, suffer in our stead in the struggle of the survival of the fittest. It gives us a chance to survive the elimination of an inadequate hypothesis--when a more dogmatic attitude would eliminate it by eliminating us. (There is a touching story of an Indian community which disappeared because of its belief in the holiness of life, including that of tigers.) We thus obtain the fittest theory within our reach by the elimination of those which are less fit. (By 'fitness' I do not mean merely 'usefulness' but truth; see chapters 3 and 10, below.) I do not think that this procedure is irrational or in need of any further rational justification.