Quotes
Quotes about Force
Commemoration of Lanfranc, Prior of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1089 Only he who flings himself upward when the pull comes to drag him down, can hope to break the force of temptation. Temptation may be an invitation to hell, but much more is it an opportunity to reach heaven. At the moment of temptation, sin and righteousness are both very near the Christian; but, of the two, the latter is the nearer.
Continuing a short series on topics of Christian apologetics: The philosopher [Immanuel] Kant was right long ago to notice that moral activity implies a religious dimension. The atheist [Friedrich] Nietzsche also saw the point and argued forcefully that the person who gives up belief in God must be consistent and give up Christian morals as well, because the former is the foundation of the latter. He had nothing but contempt for fellow humanists who refused to see that Christian morality cannot survive the loss of its theological moorings, except as habit or as lifeless tradition. As Ayn Rand also sees so clearly, love of the neighbor cannot be rationally justified within the framework of secular humanism. Love for one's neighbor is an ethical implication of the Christian position. This suggests to me that the world's deepest problem is not economic or technological, but spiritual and moral. What is missing is the vision of reality that can sustain the neighbor-oriented life style that is so urgently needed in our world today.
Concluding a short series on topics of Christian apologetics: We need to forget the imaginary Christ who has been ours too long and to rediscover the real Christ, the Christ of the prophets and the martyrs and the confessors, the Christ who is not only the lover of souls but also master, a monarch with demands to make in industry, in finance, in education, in the arts, in marriage, in the home; the Christ who is teacher of a social ideology which has eternal validity; the Christ who cries aloud with convincing force, "He who would save his life will lose it; only he who is willing to lose his life, can find it.".
[Magic] is not mere superstition. It can corrupt people who otherwise carry on their daily duties with apparent reasonableness and common sense... It exploits man's urgent desire for all the material good things of lifeâhealth, prosperity, success, "good luck"âand at times, it may even descend to aggressive acts against one's competitors and supposed enemies and rivals. It rests upon an assumption, not always explicit, that divine power can be manipulated and used for human ends. And it is the more dangerous among people who assume that since God is love, He will do whatever they ask, provided they use the right formula in asking. Magic mocks God's freedom no less than His purpose. For it binds men more and more in a prison of fear and selfishness. Far from liberating divine power, it shuts out the free and creative forces of love and self-sacrifice that alone ennoble life and remove the alienation of men one from another. Love, not compulsion, casts out fear.
Though sympathizing with the revolutionaries' analysis of what was wrong with society and in fact being mistaken for a revolutionary himself by the political authorities of his day, nevertheless Jesus did not advocate a new political regime to be established by force through revolutionary action. He called for the love of our enemies, not their destruction; ... for readiness to suffer instead of using force; for forgiveness instead of hate and revenge. One might even say [that] Jesus was more revolutionary than the revolutionaries, or revolutionary in a very different way. The revolution he had in mind was a radical change of heart on the part of mankind, involving conversion away from selfishness and toward the willing service of God and of people in general.
Commemoration of Caroline Chisholm, Social Reformer, 1877 The truth of Christ's supremacy over all the powers in the universe is one which modern man sorely needs to learn. He is oppressed by a sense of impotence in the grasp of merciless forces which he can neither overcome nor escape. These forces may be Frankenstein monsters of man's own creation, or they may be horrors outside his conscious control; either way, he is intimidated by the vastness of those fateful currents which threaten to sweep him on to destruction, whether he will or no. And to modern man in his frustration and despair, the full-orbed gospel of Christ, as Paul presents it to the Colossians, is the one message of hope. Christ crucified and risen is Lord of all; all the forces in the universe, well-disposed and ill-disposed, are subject to Him. To be united to Christ by faith is to throw off the thraldom of hostile powers, to enjoy perfect freedom, to gain the mastery over the dominion of evilâbecause Christ's victory is ours.
[Jesus'] life and utterance were the proclamation of this new order of things, of this new force by which man was to be ruled. When, unarmed and defenseless, He said to the Roman power, "My Kingdom is not of this world," He spoke the word of inauguration. Over the kingdom of the elemental forces, over the kingdom of the animal, over the kingdom of the intellect, He beheld rising, with Himself as prophet and embodiment, that kingdom of the spiritual whose forces should be those of purity and sacrifice, love and trust, obedience and service. It is the last of the kingdoms because it is the highest; it will be the most enduring for there is nothing that can take its place.
Concluding a short series on sin: It is appalling to think of a power so strong that it can annihilate with the irresistible force of its grinding heel; but it is inspiring to consider an Almightiness that transforms the works of evil into the hand-maidens of righteousness and converts the sinner into the saint. And it is this latter power which eternal Love possesses and exhibits. He persistently dwells in the sinner until the sinner wakes up in His likeness and is satisfied with it.
Feast of Michael & All Angels The nominal Christian, then, will see Jesus as a name, a representative, a symbol, a personification, a prototype, a figure, a model, an exemplar for something else. The nominal Christian pays homage to something about Jesus, rather than worshipping the man himself. For this reason, nominal Christians will extol the moral teachings of Jesus, the faith of Jesus, the personality of Jesus, the compassion of Jesus, the world view of Jesus, the self-understanding of Jesus, etc. None of these worships Jesus as the Christ, but only something about him, something peripheral to the actual flesh-and-blood man. This is why when the almighty God came into the world in Jesus, he came as the lowest of the low, as weakness itself, as a complete and utter nothing, in order that men would be forced into the crucial decision about him alone and would not be able to worship anything about him.
Commemoration of Margery Kempe, Mystic, after 1433 If you believe, where are your works? Your faith is something everyone knows, for everyone knows that Christ was [crucified], and that everywhere men pray to Him. The whole world knows that His glory has not been spread by force and weapons, but by poor fishermen. 0 wise man, do you think the poor fishermen were not clever enough for this? Where they worked, there they made hearts better; where they could not work, there men remained bad; and therefore was the faith true and from God. The signs which the Lord had promised followed their teaching: in His name they drove out the devil; they spoke in new tongues; if they drank any deadly drink, they received therefrom no harm. Even if these wonders had not occurred, there would have been the wonder of wonders, that poor fishermen without any miracle could accomplish so great a work as the faith. It came from God, and so is Christ true, and Christ is thy God, who is in heaven and awaits thee.
The distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force.
Truth is the most powerful force on earth because it cannot be changed.
Not being beautiful was the true blessing. Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome.
I see myself as an intelligent, sensitive human, with the soul of a clown which forces me to blow it at the most important moments.
Glass antique! 'twixt thee and Nell Draw we here a parallel! She, like thee, was forced to bear All reflections, foul or fair. Thou art deep and bright within, Depths as bright belong'd to Gwynne; Thou art very frail as well, Frail as flesh is,--so was Nell.
Like the furtive collectors of stolen art, we [cell biologists] are forced to be lonely admirers of spectacular architecture, exquisite symmetry, dramas of violence and death, mobility, self-sacrifice and, yes, rococo sex.
There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas... that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.
When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I seem to be living among the gods.
I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research.
A system support specialist's life is a sorry one. The only advantage he has over ER doctors is that malpractice suits are rare. On the other hand, ER doctors never have to deal with patients installing new versions of their own innards! Dick Maliska Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining. â¢Jeff Raskin Applying computer technology is simply finding the right wrench to pound in the correct screw. â¢Anonymous The Programmer's Time-Space Continuum is defined as "Programmers continuously space the time." â¢Leon Lanthier Computers are useless - they only give you answers. â¢Pablo Picasso "Paradosfunctionoracle" is the term used by technicians to describe the reason no one knows why your computer won't work. â¢J. H. Goldfuss No machine will increase the possibilities of life. They only increase the possibilities of idleness. â¢John Ruskin All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors. â¢Anonymous Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in the world that just don't add up. â¢James Magary Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. â¢E W Dijkstra Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equpped with 18,000 vaccuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons. â¢Popular Mechanics, 1949 Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done. â¢Andy Rooney Not even computers will replace committees, because committees buy computers. â¢Edward Shepherd Mead A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. â¢John Gall There won't be anything we won't say to people to try and convince them that our way is the way to go. â¢Bill Gates If you can't make it good, at least make it look good. â¢Bill Gates Looking at the proliferation of personal web pages on the net, it looks like very soon everyone on earth will have 15 Megabytes of fame. â¢MG Siriam Surfing on the Internet is like sex; everyone boasts about doing more than they actually do. But in the case of the Internet, it's a lot more. â¢Tom Fasulo Cyberspace: A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation. â¢William Gibson URLs are the 800 numbers of the 1990's. â¢Chris Clark My favorite thing about the Internet is that you get to go into the private world of real creeps without having to smell them. â¢Penn Jillett We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true. â¢Robert Wilensky It shouldn't be too much of a surprise that the Internet has evolved into a force strong enough to reflect the greatest hopes and fears of those who use it. After all, it was designed to withstand nuclear war, not just the puny huffs and puffs of politicians and religious fanatics. â¢Denise Caruso Wow! They've got the internet on computers now! â¢Homer Simpson Man is a game playing animal and a computer is another way to play games. â¢Scott Adams I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them. â¢Isaac Asimov Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idoits. So far, the Universe is winning. â¢Rich Cook If automobiles had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside. â¢Robert Cringely I try to get people to see what I have... When you run a computer company, you have to get people to buy into your dreams. â¢Steve Jobs The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a little. â¢Porterfield People who buy Macs are the same people who said BETA is better than VHS 15 years ago. â¢Anonymous Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand. â¢Anonymous But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses. â¢Bruce Leverett Anybody who's studied software engineering knows that a schedule which underestimates the time needed to develop a project actually makes the project take longer.
A trend is a trend is a trend. But the question is, will it bend? Will it alter its course through some unforeseen force and come to a premature end?
I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.
I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor provisions; I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country in his heart and not with his lips only, follow me.
True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
Act boldly and unseen forces will come to your aid.
