Arrogant Fruits of Ignorance
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"I think the people are ungrateful. They still attack us.
We bring them freedom and they're still trying to kill us"
Joshuah Thompson, an American soldier seven months
after the US invaded Iraq, Reuters story by Brian Williams, October 17, 2003
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Accuracy of Predictions
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"I like Leo Tolstoy a lot but, in my opinion, he will not write much"
Fyodor Dostoevsky in his letter to A.N. Maykov, January 18, 1856
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Logic
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"An ideally rational progression of thought will finally bring
you back to the point of departure where you return aware of
the simplicity of genius, with a delightful sensation that
you have embraced truth, while actually you have
merely embraced your own self"
Vladimir Nabokov, "Ultima Thule"
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Scientific Method
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"When a hypothesis enters a scientist's mind, he checks it by
calculation and experiment, that is, by the mimicry and the pantomime
of truth"
Vladimir Nabokov, "Ultima Thule"
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Science
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"It is silly to seek a basic law, even sillier to find it"
Vladimir Nabokov, "The Eye"
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American Dream
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"Every now and then they speak of the American flag and they all
adore the 'American way of life' - which in their eyes seems to be
a matter of honour; in ours it is a matter of taste... But can we trust
them as leaders?"
George Mikes, "How to Scrape Skies"
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Relationships between Sexes
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"At last the Red Queen began. `You've missed the soup and
fish,' she said. `Put on the joint!' And the waiters set a leg
of mutton before Alice, who looked at it rather anxiously, as she
had never had to carve a joint before.
`You look a little shy; let me introduce you to that leg of
mutton,' said the Red Queen. `Alice - Mutton; Mutton - Alice.'
The leg of mutton got up in the dish and made a little bow to
Alice; and Alice returned the bow, not knowing whether to be
frightened or amused"
Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
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"This is how everyone has to begin, men who have never known a woman,
women who have never known a man,
until the day comes for the one who knows to teach the one who does not"
Jose Saramago, "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ"
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The Twentieth Century
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"Our enchanters, our demons, are noble iridescent creatures
with translucent talons and mightily beating wings; but ... the New Believers
urged one to imagine a sphere where our splendid friends had been utterly
degraded, had become nothing but vicious monsters, disgusting devils, with
the black scrota of carnivora and the fangs of serpents, revilers and
tormentors of female souls; while on the opposite side of the cosmic lane
a rainbow mist of angelic spirits ... restored all the stalest but potent
myths of old creeds, with rearrangement for melodeon of all the cacophonies
of all the divinities and divines ever spawned in the marshes of this
our sufficient world"
Vladimir Nabokov, "Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle"
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"kingdoms fell and dictatordoms rose, and republics half-sat, half-lay in various attitudes of discomfort"
Vladimir Nabokov, "Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle"
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Y2K
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"the next century, whose very designation - a two and three zeros -
is so fantastic as to seem absurd"
Vladimir Nabokov, "The Eye"
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Russian Ingenuity
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"Soviet culture was superior to Western; everything, from the bicycle
to television, was supposed to have been invented by Russians (usually
by a man called Popov)"
George Mikes, "Any Souvenirs?"
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American Politics
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"As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have
too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of
a good thing"
Karl Rove, a senior advisor for George W. Bush, "The Daily Texan",
March 19, 2001
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