Facts Absorbed Without Context

"Facts absorbed without context merely magnify the intellectual deficiencies of the autodidact."
Joe Queenan, New York Times, 3 October 2004

Nature

Nature is, what you may do.
Emerson (The Conduct of Life: Fate)

The People Without Stories

The fact that we tell stories is a symptom of our predicament. Gossip stories, adventure stories. We need them, yet they have a pernicious effect on us. Blessed would be the people without stories, if any such existed.

Dreaming

"Dreaming is a natural process, like eating or working, that we have the opportunity to make more beautiful if we wish to."
N.N. Scott, in conversation 2004

The Souls in Plato's Cave

"Like the souls in Plato's cave, we ourselves cast the shadows that make us aware of our existence, and at the same time block the light that is the source of our existence."
N.N. Scott, in conversation, 2004

Dangerous Stories

"Some stories are extremely dangerous, but not in the way most people believe: not because they refer to socially uncomfortable issues and facts. They are dangerous because they teach us to think in the wrong way about our problems."
N.N. Scott, in conversation, (2004)

Our Weak Points

"At this time, before things get really messy, we should work to clarify our understanding of our weak points, our doubt."
Dr. Peter Khan, in conversation, 2006

Your Pilgrimage

"You are now on your pilgrimage well begun, and from tomorrow on you are the guests of Baha'u'llah."
Ali Muhammad Varqa, in conversation, 2006.

A Genuine Human Being

"While the world was full of people, all too full, finding a genuine human being was not easy."
Eiji Yoshikawa, Musashi (1935) p.293

Books Should Not Be Too Big

"Books should not be too big. A big book resembles one of those panning-for-gold tourist attractions in the Rocky Mountains: a few flakes of gold amid much sand and water."
N.N. Scott, 2006

A Good Ending

"The story should end where the next story most logically begins. A good ending is a good beginning."
(from one of my notebooks, 2006)

Overheard in Texas

"The more you look at someone, the more they become a human being, and the more trouble you have slitting their throat and dumping them into a hole in the ground."

Utter Naivete

The sign of utter naivete is to wander into tendentious, polemical discussions without realizing it -- like cave divers who swim beyond their air.

Competing for the Same Space

The atheistic cosmology is only the extreme state of the religious belief that the creator of the universe is separate, a thing we supplicate at a distance. These two viewpoints prompt such contention because they are both on the same side of the equation, and competing for the same mental space.

Too Complex to Study

"Physics [...] restricts itself to extremely simple questions. If a molecule becomes too complex, they hand it over to the chemists. If it becomes too complex for them, they hand it to biologists. And if the system is too complex for them, they hand it to psychologists ... and so on until it ends up in the hands of historians or novelists. As you deal with more and more complex systems, it becomes harder and harder to find deep and interesting properties."
Noam Chomsky, New Scientist, 19 March 2012