No matter what problem you encounter, whether it's a grand challenge for humanity or a personal problem of your own, there's an idea out there that can overcome it. And you can find that idea.
Ray KurzweilRead
Take death for example. A great deal of our effort goes into avoiding it. We make extraordinary efforts to delay it, and often consider its intrusion a tragic event. Yet we'd find it hard to live without it. Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.
Interpretation
Death is essential for giving life meaning, as it adds value to our time.
In this quote, Ray Kurzweil emphasizes the paradox of death's role in our lives. While much of humanity works tirelessly to avoid death and perceives it as a tragic intrusion, it is actually death that imparts significance to our existence and the time we have. Without the limitation imposed by mortality, time itself would lose its importance, thus highlighting the value of living fully within the constraints of our lifespan.
In practice
During a speech on the importance of time management, one might quote this to illustrate the value of each moment.
No matter what problem you encounter, whether it's a grand challenge for humanity or a personal problem of your own, there's an idea out there that can overcome it. And you can find that idea.
When I was a student at MIT, we all shared one computer and it took up a whole building. The computer in your cell phone today is a million times cheaper and a thousand times more powerful. What now fits in your pocket 25 years from now will fit into a blood cell and will again be millions of times more cost effective.
A successful person isn't necessarily better than her less successful peers at solving problems; her pattern-recognition facilities have just learned what problems are worth solving.
When you talk to a human in 2035, you'll be talking to someone that's a combination of biological and non-biological intelligence.
Mobile phones are misnamed. They should be called gateways to human knowledge.
I'm working on artificial intelligence. Actually, natural language understanding, which is to get computers to understand the meaning of documents.
Why is it that countries which we call strong are so powerful in creating wars but are so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard?
Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.
The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.
What religion a man holds, to what race he belongs, these things are not important; the really important thing is this knowledge: the knowledge of God's plan for men. For God has a plan, and that plan is evolution.
No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.
No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.
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