A Quote by John Stuart Mill
Experience has taught me that those who give their time to the absorbing claims of what is called society, not having leisure to keep up a large acquaintance with the organs of opinion, remain much more ignorant of the general state either of the public mind, or of the active and instructed part of it, than a recluse who reads the newspapers need be.
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My father always taught me to appreciate what you're fortunate to have and give back to those who need it. No part of our society is more important than the children, especially the ones who need our help.
Leisure requires the evidence of our own feelings, because it is not so much a quality of time as a peculiar state of mind. ... What being at leisure means is more easily felt than defined.
Civilization, or that which is so called, has operated two ways to make one part of society more affluent and the other part more wretched than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.
Time and experience have taught me that fame and money very rarely go to the worthy, by the way - hence we shouldn't ever be too impressed by either of those impostors. Value folk for who they are, how they live and what they give - that's a much better benchmark.
Don't talk to me about appealing to the public. I am done with the public, for the present anyway. The public reads the headlines and that is all. The story itself is fair and shows the facts. That would be all right if the public read the facts. But it does not. It reads the headlines and listens to the demagogues and that's the stuff public opinion is made of.
I think polling is the best way of gauging public opinion - doing something that's independent, that's quantitative, that doesn't give just the loud voices about how things are going; or doesn't give so called experts the notion that they know what public opinion is. I think that's what makes public opinion polling pretty important. Qualitative assessments of public opinion; going out and talking to people and understanding the nuance to what's behind the numbers. I think it's awfully important as well.
People are really surprised when they meet me that I'm a recluse. People think I'm very gregarious and outgoing - and I am - I'm thinking about writing a book about it called 'The Gregarious Recluse.' How the more that you put me out there in front of audiences, the more that when I have down time I have to disappear.
Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding.
More people than ever are spending money to support more artists and musicians and give them more leisure time to build cereal balls...and the art world is eating those balls up!
Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.
I think the people will- who advocate having a step back and read those public opinion polls on the front page of the newspapers all over this country saying public supports restoration in restoration of the Everglades, protection of the parks and the creation of monuments.
I think the people will - who advocate having a step back and read those public opinion polls on the front page of the newspapers all over this country saying public supports restoration in restoration of the Everglades, protection of the parks and the creation of monuments.
In the last thirty years we have gained enormous amount of freedom (everywhere, except perhaps in places like Burma or North Korea), but we lost quite a large amount of security. Because of all sorts of reasons, because of globalization which stripped the nation state of a large part of its sovereignty away, because of the dismantling of the so-called welfare state. As a result, people feel simultaneously much freer and much more insecure.
When I discovered PopTech and other kind of intellectualish, online portals for curiosity. Very quickly, I just got so much more out of those than from so-called "Ivy League" education that I knew it was on me to keep myself stimulated, and to keep learning, more than anything. And, because I paid my way through college, I was working at Penn, two to four jobs at a time to pay for school.
Many young people now end a discussion with the supposedly definitive and unanswerable statement that such is their opinion, and their opinion is just as valid as anyone else's. The fact is that our opinion on an infinitely large number of questions is not worth having, because everyone is infinitely ignorant.
Moreover, only a strong and united scientific opinion imposing the intrinsic value of scientific progress on society at large can elicit the support of scientific inquiry by the general public.
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