Painting can not, without falling into abstraction, let a partial aspect of art dominate, whether it be drawing, color, composition, or any other one of the extraordinary multiplicity of means the totality of which alone constitutes this art.
~ Gustave Courbet
:::
The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art.
~ John Foster Dulles
:::
In a very deep sense, I think the biggest miracle that we need to create the super powerful A.I. is already behind us. It’s already in the rearview mirror. We just needed an algorithm that could learn and a network architecture that could somehow encode the knowledge and the capability to reason.
~ Sam Altman
:::
The conservative response to modernity is to embrace it, but to embrace it critically, in full consciousness that human achievements are rare and precarious, that we have no God-given right to destroy our inheritance, but must always patiently submit to the voice of order, and set an example of orderly living.
~ Roger Scruton
:::
An intellectual hatred is the worst. So let her think opinions are accursed.
~ William Butler Yeats
:::
If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?
~ Frédéric Bastiat
:::
We have a tradition in this country of skepticism about government, of looking at it very carefully, of seeing whether our public servants can take it. That isn’t always comfortable, but, on the whole, it is good.
~ Dean Acheson
:::
The simple truth is that perseverance in good policies is the only avenue to success.
~ Dean Acheson
:::
Best wishes all our readers who celebrate Christmas.
:::
The Shanghai Science and Technology Museum was opened on this day – December 18 – in 2001.
:::