If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you open to my ideas
John CleeseRead
Sci-fi has never really been my bag. But I do believe in a lot of weird things these days, such as synchronicity. Quantum physics suggests it's possible, so why not?
Interpretation
The speaker expresses a belief in unusual phenomena, connecting them to quantum physics and synchronicity.
John Cleese reflects on his ambivalence towards science fiction while acknowledging his openness to believing in unconventional ideas. He highlights synchronicity—meaningful coincidences—and relates it to quantum physics, suggesting that if science allows for such oddities, then it's reasonable to entertain them. This quote bridges the gap between skepticism and wonder, inviting a broader view of reality influenced by scientific principles.
In practice
During a discussion about the intersection of science and fantasy.
If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you open to my ideas
Because, as we all know, it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it’s also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we’re not so sure about.
If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time to be considering alternative strategies.
In Britain, girls seem to be either bright or attractive. In America, that's not the case. They're both.
I used to desire many, many things, but now I have just one desire, and that's to get rid of all my other desires.
When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.
Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality. Though different traditions may emphasize different aspects, it is only the interplay of these antithetic forces and the struggle for their synthesis that constitute the life, usefulness, and supreme value of mathematical science.
Low socioeconomic status carries with it an enormously increased risk of a broad range of diseases, and this gradient cannot be fully explained by factors such as health-care access.
During my time in orbit, I lost bone mass, my muscles atrophied, and my blood redistributed itself in my body, which strained my heart. Every day, I was exposed to ten times the radiation of a person on Earth, which will increase my risk of a fatal cancer for the rest of my life.
As a theoretician, I am proud to be part of a counter revolution... discovering that quantum field theory language was not dead and finished but had not really been explored thoroughly enough.
[Mathematics] is security. Certainty. Truth. Beauty. Insight. Structure. Architecture. I see mathematics, the part of human knowledge that I call mathematics, as one thing - one great, glorious thing. Whether it is differential topology, or functional analysis, or homological algebra, it is all one thing. ... They are intimately interconnected, they are all facets of the same thing. That interconnection, that architecture, is secure truth and is beauty. That's what mathematics is to me.
Mathematics is one of the deepest and most powerful expressions of pure human reason, and, at the same time, the most fundamental resource for description and analysis of the experiential world.
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