Freebsd Fortunes 7

We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely
intellectual fields.  But which are the best ones to start with?  Many people
think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be
best.  It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with
the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand
and speak English.
                -- Alan M. Turing

We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should govern
their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the center of
their spiritual universe, nor Hebrews that Mohammed is a major prohpet, nor
Christians that Shinto best expresses their spiritual concerns, to say
nothing of the fact that we may not be able to get Christians to agree among
themselves about their relationship to God.  But all will agree on a
proposition that they possess profound spiritual resources.  If, in addition,
we can get them to accept the further proposition that whatever form the
Deity may have in their own theology, the Deity is not only external, but
internal and acts through them, and they themselves give proof or disproof
of the Deity in what they do and think; if this further proposition can be
accepted, then we come that much closer to a truly religious situation on
earth.
                -- Norman Cousins, from his book "Human Options"

We may not like doctors, but at least they doctor.  Bankers are not ever
popular but at least they bank.  Policeman police and undertakers take
under.  But lawyers do not give us law.  We receive not the gladsome light
of jurisprudence, but rather precedents, objections, appeals, stays,
filings and forms, motions and counter-motions, all at $250 an hour.
                -- Nolo News, summer 1989

We may not return the affection of those who like us,
but we always respect their good judgement.

...we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection
by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.
I do not doubt that natural selection acted in building our oversized
brains -- and I am equally confidant that our brains became large as
an adaptation for definite roles (probably a complex set of interacting
functions).  But these assumptions do not lead to the notion, often
uncritically embraced by strict Darwinians, that all major capacities
of the brain must arise as direct products of natural selection.
                -- S.J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"

We must believe that it is the darkest before the dawn
of a beautiful new world.  We will see it when we believe it.
                -- Saul Alinsky

We must die because we have known them.
                -- Ptah-hotep, 2000 B.C.

We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess.  We must
condemn once and for all the formula 'chess for the sake of chess,' like
the formula 'art for art's sake.'  We must organize shock-brigades of
chess-play ers, and begin the immediate realization of a Five-Year Plan
for chess.
                -- Nikolai V. Krylenko, People's Commissar for Justice
                   (of RFSFR, later of USSR), speaking at a 1932 Congress
                   of Chess Players, as quoted in Boris Souvarine's
                   "Stalin," published London, 1939

...we must not judge the society of the future by considering whether or not
we should like to live in it; the question is whether those who have grown up
in it will be happier than those who have grown up in our society or those of
the past.
                -- Joseph Wood Krutch

We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy's side of
the front is always propaganda and what is said on our side of the front
is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace.
                -- Walter Lippmann