Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.
William GaddisRead
He walked out into the cold morning asking himself this heretical question: Can you start measuring a minute at any instant you wish?
Interpretation
The quote questions the nature of time and our perception of it.
William Gaddis raises a profound philosophical question about the measurement and perception of time. By suggesting that one can start measuring a minute at any instant, he invites contemplation on the subjective nature of time and how our personal experiences can alter its meaning, emphasizing that time is not merely a fixed framework but rather a fluid concept shaped by individual perspective.
In practice
In a discussion about how personal experiences shape our understanding of time.
Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.
I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.
Say a word, say a thousand to me on the telephone and I shall choose the wrong one to cling to as though you had said it after long deliberation when only I provoked it from you, I will cling to it from among a thousand, to be provoked and hurl it back with something I mean no more than you meant that, something for you to cling to and retreat clinging to.
How real is any of the past, being every moment revalued to make the present possible.
If you want to make a million you don't have to understand money, what you have to understand is people's fears about money
The people I really do dislike are the morally unimaginative kind of evolutionary reductionists who, in the name of science, think they can explain everything in terms of our early hominid ancestors or our genes, with their combination of high-handed tone and disregard for history. Such reductive speculation encourages a really empty scientism.
It is inconceivable that the God who gives Himself in His Son to save us, should have created some people ordained to evil and damnation. There can only be one predestination to salvation. In and through Jesus Christ all people are predestined to be saved. Our free choice is ruled out in this regard. God wants free people, except in relation to this last and definitive decision. We are not free to decide and choose to be damned.
The essence of the question is the opening up, and keeping open, of possibilities.
True beauty is not related to what color your hair is or what color your eyes are. True beauty is about who you are as a human being, your principles, your moral compass.
The fact that labour is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself.
Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.
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