It's all too easy to dismiss the future. People confuse what's impossible today with what's impossible tomorrow.
George M. ChurchRead
Anytime you see somebody keeping a secret, that's symptomatic that something's wrong with the society around them. That means there's discrimination or worse.
Interpretation
Secrets often indicate deeper societal issues, such as discrimination or injustice.
This quote by George M. Church suggests that when individuals feel the need to keep secrets, it reflects broader systemic problems within society. The act of hiding information typically arises from a fear of discrimination or other negative consequences, highlighting the importance of transparency and open communication in a healthy society.
In practice
Use this quote in a discussion about the importance of transparency in governance.
It's all too easy to dismiss the future. People confuse what's impossible today with what's impossible tomorrow.
You can't just hoard your ideas inside the ivory tower. You have to get them out into the world.
Clearly, we are a species that is well connected to other species. Whether or not we evolve from them, we are certainly very closely related to them. A series of mutations could change us into all kinds of intermediate species. Whether or not those intermediate species are provably in the past, they could easily be in our future.
We have a love affair with the idea of the 'natural,' even though we, as a species, are about as unnatural as you can imagine.
At some point, someone will come up with an airtight argument as to why they should have a cloned child. At that point, cloning will be acceptable.
Most people are excited about themselves. Personal genome will deliver for inexpensively something about science to which you can relate. Just like computers are becoming something to which you can relate. It should be even easier to relate to your own biology, and I hope that will be one of the ways we get broader literacy in science.
I stood beside Van Helsing, and said;- "Ah, well, poor girl, there is peace for her at last. It is the end!" He turned to me, and said with grave solemnity:- "Not so; alas! not so. It is only the beginning!
If you haven't met Satan recently, you are probably going his way!
what is lost because it is most precious what is most precious because it is lost
Yet I also suspected that what I was seeing was but a part of the truth and perhaps not even the most important part; beneath these faces, these clothes, accents, rudenesses, was power and sorrow, both unadmitted, unrealized, the power of inventors, the sorrow of the disconnected.
The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial. It is the institution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree - and thus keeps the road open to man's most valuable attribute: the creative mind.
If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values: they're hobbies.
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