“When we mistake what we can know for all there is to know, a healthy appreciation of one's ignorance in the face of a mystery like soil fertility gives way to the hubris that we can treat nature as a machine. Once that leap has been made, one input follows another, so that when the synthetic nitrogen fed to plants makes them more attractive to insects and vulnerable to disease, as we have discovered, the farmer turns to chemical pesticides to fix his broken machine.” KnowsWayGivingHas BeensMadeFacesTurnsMistakeMysteryLandIgnoranceBrokenHealthyDiseaseMachinesTreatsPlantAppreciationVulnerableAttractiveSoilFedsLeapChemicalsFarmersInsectsInputHubrisFertilitySyntheticPesticidesNitrogen Author:Michael Pollan
“But once a culture develops sufficiently to become skeptical, the idea of censorship becomes less attractive. To suppress a book or a picture or a sculpture or a play or a film is a terrible act of aggression against the artist who created it. This is a miming of capital punishment; it destroys the life that has been emanated by a life.” Has BeensBookIdeasPlayFilmArtistCultureTerribleSpeechPunishmentAttractiveCensorshipAggressionSkepticismSculptureSkepticalCapital Punishment Author:Rebecca West
“But although the attractive virtue of the earth extends upwards, as has been said, so very far, yet if any stone should be at a distance great enough to become sensible compared with the earth's diameter, it is true that on the motion of the earth such a stone would not follow altogether; its own force of resistance would be combined with the attractive force of the earth, and thus it would extricate itself in some degree from the motion of the earth.” IfsShouldHas BeensSaidEnoughWould BeEarthForceVirtueDegreesStonesDistanceResistanceAttractiveSensible Author:Johannes Kepler