“When the first emperor wanted to unify the country, one of the major policies was to create one system of written signs. By force, brutal force, he eliminated all the other scripts. One script became the official script. All the others were banned. And those who used other scripts were punished severely. And then the meanings of all the characters, over the centuries, had to be kept uniform as a part of the political apparatus. So from the very beginning the written word was a powerful political tool.” FirstsCountryCharacterWantedPoliticalUsedForcePowerfulWrittenCenturyPolicyMajorsToolsScriptsOfficialsBrutalUniformsEmperorBannedWritten Word Author:Ha Jin
“Although it is still important to develop an HIV vaccine, we have significant tools already at our disposal that can make a major impact on the trajectory of this epidemic.” StillsImportantMajorsToolsImpactSignificantHivVaccinesEpidemicsTrajectory Author:Anthony S. Fauci
“Every major communication tool on the Internet has spam and abuse problems. All email services, blogging services and social networks have to dedicate a significant amount of resources and time to fighting abuse and protecting their users.” ProblemFightingSocialCommunicationAmountInternetMajorsResourcesToolsAbuseSignificantUsersEmailBloggingSocial NetworkSpam Author:Evan Williams
“Every faith uses some kind of tool to understand itself better. Faith seeks understanding. The Western tradition has used philosophy to understand the truths of the faith and you come up with theology. Where as, Islam at a certain point said: we'll use law. There are these four major, developed schools of Islamic jurisprudence.” KindSaidPhilosophyUseSchoolLawUsedCertainUnderstandingFourMajorsTraditionToolsIslamWesternCome UpTheologyIslamicJurisprudence Author:Francis George
“Virtually every major technological advance in the history of the human species- back to the invention of stone tools and the domestication of fire has been ethically ambiguous. If you want to reason about faith, and offer a reasoned (and reason responsive) defense of faith as an extra category of belief worthy of special consideration, I'm eager to play. I certainly grant the existence of the phenomenon of faith; what I want to see is a reasoned ground for taking faith seriously as a way of getting to the truth , and not, say, just as a way people comfort themselves and each other” PeopleIfsWayWantHumansHas BeensReasonPlayBeliefExistenceFireSpecialComfortOffersMajorsToolsStonesSpeciesWorthyDefenseInventionExtrasConsiderationGrantsPhenomenonCategoriesTechnologicalAmbiguousHuman Species Author:Daniel Dennett
“One of the major symptoms of the general crisis existent in our world today is our lack of sensitivity to words. We use words as tools. We forget that words are a repository of the spirit. The tragedy of our times is that the vessels of the spirit are broken. We cannot approach the spirit unless we repair the vessels. Reverence for words - an awareness of the wonder of words, of the mystery of words - is an essential prerequisite for prayer. By the word of God the world was created.” WorldUseTodaySpiritPrayerForgetWonderMysteryAwarenessBrokenEssentialsApproachMajorsToolsTragedyCrisisOur TimeOur WorldWord Of GodReverenceSensitivitySymptomsVesselWorld TodayPrerequisites Author:Abraham Joshua Heschel
“I think the thing you're seeing now with the music industry is that the people who have tight-knit communities are now able to really hold each other up because of the internet tools. And the really top-down pyramid scheme of major labels and typical superstars isn't sustainable anymore because the system has collapsed.” PeopleThinkingAbleCommunitySeeingIndustryInternetMajorsToolsLabelsSchemesTypicalPyramidsMusic IndustrySuperstarTop DownPyramid Schemes Author:Amanda Palmer
“I changed my major to English literature, which was on the advice of my father. I finally said, "You know, Dad, to heck with it: I'm just going to be an actor. But I'm going to go to school." And he said, "Well, if you're going to go to school, then major in English literature. Those are the tools you are going to be working with as a man who's going to be acting in English, one would assume."” IfsKnowsMenWellsSaidSchoolActorsFatherLiteratureActingAdviceChangedDadMajorsToolsAssumingEnglish Literature Author:Keith Carradine
“Since the election [of Donald Trump], I've been thinking about a lot of theory. Lots of [Michel] Foucault and [Karl] Marx, thinking about different systems, thinking about power. Trying to figure out what I can take and learn from history as a tool for getting through whatever is happening right now, which feels very significant and major.” ThinkingFeelsTryingI CanDifferentFiguresTheoryTrumpRight NowMajorsHappeningsToolsElectionSignificantSystems Thinking Author:Morgan Parker
“Keep in mind that every single generation before us has worked under the assumption that they possessed all the major tools for understanding the universe, and they were all wrong, without exception.” MindUniverseUnderstandingGenerationsMajorsToolsAssumptionExceptionPossessedUnderstanding The Universe Book:Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain Source: Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain
“Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.” StatesUseBigsGovernmentUsedInterestUnitedCitiesUnited StatesMajorsToolsRateSizeDebtScalesManageBudgetsCorporationsMassiveManipulationAssetsSovereignInterest RateBig Cities Author:Matt Taibbi