A Quote by Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff
It is sometimes easier to circumvent prevailing difficulties [in science] rather than to attack them.
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Sometimes it's easier to attack the spouse than it is to attack the politician.
It's easier to poke holes in an idea than think of ways to fill them. And it's easier to focus on the 100 reasons you shouldn't do something rather than the one reason you should.
It is easier for a libertarian to attack the science of global warming than to alter one's core libertarian beliefs.
The scientists who attack mainstream religion, rather than striving for peaceful coexistence with it, damage science, and also weaken the fight against fundamentalism.
But I'd rather help than watch. I'd rather have a heart than a mind. I'd rather expose too much than too little. I'd rather say hello to strangers than be afraid of them. I would rather know all this about myself than have more money than I need. I'd rather have something to love than a way to impress you.
The object of defense is preservation; and since it is easier to hold ground than to take it, defense is easier than attack. But defense has a passive purpose: preservation; and attack a positive one: conquest.... If defense is the stronger form of war, yet has a negative object, it follows that it should be used only so long as weakness compels, and be abandoned as soon as we are strong enough to pursue a positive object.
In England, more than in any other country, science is felt rather than thought. ... A defect of the English is their almost complete lack of systematic thinking. Science to them consists of a number of successful raids into the unknown.
The confidence in the unlimited power of science is only too often based on a false belief that the scientific method consists in the application of a ready-made technique, or in imitating the form rather than the substance of scientific procedure, as if one needed only to follow some cooking recipes to solve all social problems. It sometimes almost seems as if the techniques of science were more easily learnt than the thinking that shows us what the problems are and how to approach them.
If this is how science operates, by silencing those who express opposing views rather than by debating with them, then science is dead and we are in a new era of the Inquisition.
I want to be a force that tries to revive the human spirit rather than crush it, to open possibilities rather than close them down. Sometimes a passionate negativity is the best way to do that.
If the audience lets that stuff wash over them, you know - almost like music, rather than dialogue - and doesn't fight it, then they'll have a much easier time rather than being sort of frustrated and confused otherwise. But if you get in the right state of mind it really does work quite well.
Prevailing prayer is prayer that pushes right through all difficulties and obstacles, drives back all the opposing forces of Satan, and secures the will of God. Its purpose is to accomplish God's will on earth. Prevailing prayer is prayer that not only takes the initiative but continues on the offensive for God until spiritual victory is won.
The principal act of courage is to endure and withstand dangers doggedly rather than to attack them.
Almost no one as I think most leadership books are a joke. They are, as I note in Leadership BS, frequently based on wishes and hopes rather than reality, on inspiring stories rather than systematic social science, and on "oughts" rather than "is."
Of course, supernatural acts are what miracles are all about. They are, after all, precisely those things that circumvent the laws of nature. A god who can create the laws of nature can presumably also circumvent them at will. Although why they would have been circumvented so liberally thousands of years ago, before the invention of modern communication instruments that could have recorded them, and not today, is still something to wonder about.
Every work is completely different. Sometimes the music is first, sometimes it's parallel, and sometimes the music is after. There's no rule. Music goes differently to your emotions. With music you can create different spaces and feelings easier than you can with the visual - maybe not easier, but in a way, it's more seductive.
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