A Quote by Robert Musil

In their field they [mathematicians] do what we ought to be doing in ours. Therein lies the significant lesson ... of their existence. They are an analogy for the intellectual of the future.
In no other field has the world yet paid so dearly for the abandonment of nineteenth-century liberalism as in the field where the retreat began: in international relations. Yet only a small part of the lesson which experience ought to have taught us has been learned.
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.
I think it's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it's like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.
I've got an opinion on everything. Sure, you ought to do OCS, you ought to do renewables, you ought to do biofuels, you ought to do ethanol, all of them. Those are ours and we've got to get off the dependency on the foreign oil.
Every experience proves that the real problem of our existence lies in the fact that we ought to love one another, but do not.
To meditate, you need to feel, and feeling is a lost art. You need to feel the stillness of existence and also the sound of existence. You need to feel that which lies beyond your awareness field, and that which is within it.
Everything I've taken away from my father has been significant. So, I can't say that any one lesson is the most significant. By being around him, I learned that there is a purpose in life, and that if we are inspired to help people, we should do it.
Relations between pure and applied mathematicians are based on trust and understanding. Namely, pure mathematicians do not trust applied mathematicians, and applied mathematicians do not understand pure mathematicians.
The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant.
... one of the main functions of an analogy or model is to suggest extensions of the theory by considering extensions of the analogy, since more is known about the analogy than is known about the subject matter of the theory itself ... A collection of observable concepts in a purely formal hypothesis suggesting no analogy with anything would consequently not suggest either any directions for its own development.
In every case, we ought to act that part towards another, which we would judge to be right in him to act toward us, if we were in his circumstances and he in ours; or more generally - What we approve in others, that we ought to practise in like circumstances, what we condemn in others we ought not to do.
In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage. In every defeat is a lesson showing you how to win the victory next time. [But you must know enough to realise this, lest you focus more on the defeat than finding the lesson you paid for with the defeat. With every defeat and mistake, you have the logical right to get excited about the future when you will understand and be able to apply the lessons and thereby turn defeat and temporary failure into victory and permanent success.]
The pictures do not ask you to help these people, but something much more difficult; to be briefly, intensely aware of their existence, an existence as real and significant as your own.
If people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.
I shall not be deterred by people who don't see where the future of Africa lies. It is the short-sighted people who put their opinions in writing. They don't understand that the future of all countries lies in processing.
If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.
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