Johan Huizinga Quotes

I meant exactly what I said: that we are saddled with a culture that hasn't advanced as far as science.

I'm very pro-science and pro-technology; I believe that these have been key drivers of progress in the world in the last centuries.

Instead, in the absence of respect for human rights, science and its offspring technology have been used in this century as brutal instruments for oppression.

Is science of any value? I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.

Whatever can be done in this world will be done. The only question is whether it will be done by you or to you.

Legislators don't want to seem anti-science or anti-progress.

It is the great glory as well as the great threat of science that everything which is in principle possible can be done if the intention to do it is sufficiently resolute.

We're told that the Arabs loathe us. Really? For liberating the Iraqis? For subsidizing the lifestyles of people in Egypt and Jordan, to name but two, for giving them vast amounts of aid? For providing them with science, medicine, technology and all the other benefits of the West? Arabs should go down on their knees and thank God for the munificence of the United States.

I do not believe that the present flowering of science is due in the least to a real appreciation of the beauty and intellectual discipline of the subject. It is due simply to the fact that power, wealth and prestige can only be obtained by the correct application of science.

Science plays a huge role in our lives. We're surrounded by technology, we depend on it.

There's always, always a choice. My options might really, truly suck, but that doesn't mean there isn't a choice.

For some people, being free means being free to keep their feet on someone else's chest.

Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command over one's self; order is power.

Science can give us power over nature, but it cannot give us power over human nature.

As we all know, blinking lights means science.

Whenever people tell you they are going to wipe the slate clean, it's your slate they mean to wipe.

The future belongs to Science. More and more she will control the destinies of the nations. Already she has them in her crucible and on her balances.

I am sending back the key that let me into bluebeard's study; because he would make love to me I am sending back the key; in his eye's darkroom I can see my X-rayed heart, dissected body: I am sending back the key that let me into bluebeard s study.

If you're going to have centralization, why not have it!

Power is always right, weakness always wrong. Power is always insolent and despotic.

By 'nationalism' I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions and tens of millions of people can be confidently labeled 'good' or 'bad'...By 'patriotism' I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power.

The organization controlling the material equipment of our everyday life is such that what in itself would enable us to construct it richly plunges us instead into a poverty of abundance, making alienation all the more intolerable as each convenience promises liberation and turns out to be only one more burden. We are condemned to slavery to the means of liberation.

Never before in human history have so few owed so much to so many, Mr. Jiabao. A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9 percent—as strong, as talented, as inteligent in every way—to exist in perpetual servitude; a servitude so strong that you can put the key of his emancipation in a man's hands and he will throw it back at you with a curse.

I'm in a position where - I mean, not a lot of people are in a very fortunate position - where I kind of have the power to choose what I want to do in a way.

Restraint does not mean weakness. It does not mean giving in.