“I do think that all economies need a sense of fiscal discipline especially over the midterm and if you are in the middle of a debt crisis you can't borrow your way out of a debt crisis. That's logically impossible.”
Quote collection
Thinking Quotes — page 851 of 4756
“I'm not trying to be diplomatic. I'm trying to be more nuanced and realistic. I think there has to be a serious examination of the shortcomings of the Euro structure. Euro central institutions, whether it be fiscal policy, monetary policy, financial regulation, are simply not as robust as they are in a currency that has a national government behind it.”
“[Question: What do you think was the most important physics idea to emerge this year?] We won't know for a few years.”
“Antiliberals endlessly berate their enemies for instrumental thinking. But they do not clearly explain the evil of producing better goods at a lower cost.”
“Surely the mitochondrion that first entered another cell was not thinking about the future benefits of cooperation and integration; it was merely trying to make its own living in a tough Darwinian world”
“But our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective scientific method, with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots, is self-serving mythology.”
“I don't think academic writing ever was wonderful. However, science used to be much less specialized.”
“Rifkin's assertions bear no relationship to what I have observed and practiced for 25 years ... Either I am blind or he is wrong - and I think I can show, by analyzing his slipshod scholarship and basic misunderstanding of science, that his world is an invention constructed to validate his own private hopes ... Rifkin shows no understanding of the norms and procedures of science: he displays little comprehension of what science is and how scientists work.”
“The board transported its jurisdiction to a never-never land where a Dorothy of the new millennium might exclaim: "They still call it Kansas, but I don't think we're in the real world anymore."”
“It is the things we think we know - because they are so elementary or because they surround us - that often present the greatest difficulties when we are actually challenged to explain them.”
“It's true that the level of scientific knowledge among adults is very low, but that's not because there isn't a natural interest. I think most kids are fascinated by the natural world. I've often said that if you could quantify the mental power involved in all the dinosaur names correctly known and correctly spelled by 5-year-old kids in America, you could move any mountain on earth.”
“I'm not a big fan of psychoanalysis: I think if you have mental problems what you need are good pills. But I do think that if you have thinks that bother you, things that are unresolved, the more that you talk about them, write about them, the less serious they become.”
“For most of us, I think it's easier to admit doing wrong than being stupid.”
“I never think of stories as made things; I think of them as found things. As if you pull them out of the ground.”
“I was sitting one day and thinking about cannibalism, because that's what guys like me do... and I thought, suppose a guy was washed up on a rocky island, how much of himself could he eat?”
“I am, when you stop to think of it, a member of a fairly select group: the final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit.”
“People seem to think there's a magic formula to writing, i just write 1 word at a time.”
“I think we fought Vietnam for the benefits of civilization, and certainly we fought it to oppose authority. To show our authority, to show we weren't weak. Isn't that what Nixon kept saying? "We have to show the world that we're not weak." So of course what we ended up showing the world was that we were, yep, weak. 'Cause we couldn't beat these kids in black pajamas.”
“I think everybody has experiences from time to time they can't explain. They are peculiarities. Usually we just dismiss them because they are uncomfortable to think about.”
“I don't have anything against either of the Dead movies, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, none of those movies. If it scares somebody, I think that it is serving a valid purpose. It is doing what the filmmaker intended. But, it is not something that you hand to kids.”