Everyone post some favorite quotes!

[Taomeow]

All these years I have spent at the service of mankind brought me nothing but insult and humiliation. -- Nikola Tesla 

[Mark Foote]

"… tell me, what is the most essential place? How is effort applied?"
 

(Yuanwu Keqin, “The Blue Cliff Record”, Case 55, tr. Cleary and Cleary)

 

 

 

 

 

[oak]

" O snail

   Climb Mount Fuji

   But slowly, slowly! "

 

Kobayashi Issa

[Cobie]

 

On 11/01/2025 at 5:21 AM, Taomeow said:

All these years I have spent at the service of mankind …  -- Nikola Tesla 

Imo he did not “serve mankind”, au contraire.

In olden days in China, a gentleman did not waste his time on trying to understand these things. Instead all effort went into the cultivation of the self: the inner realm.

 

Spoiler

Early Confucians saw reality as being bifurcated into two distinct realms--"inner" and "outer".

And that ming ("fate") refers to the unpredictable forces in the outside realm, which are beyond the bounds of proper human endeavor. 

 

The vagaries of ming are not the concern of the gentleman, whose efforts and worries are to be focused on the cultivation of the self: the inner realm where "seeking helps one to get it." 

 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1399496?seq=1

 

 

Edited 7 hours ago by Cobie

[Taomeow]

2 hours ago, Cobie said:

 

Imo he did not “serve mankind”, au contraire.

 

 

 

What's the source of this opinion?

I've read Nikola Tesla's biography, he was an extraordinary guy, with many weird quirks (geniuses are prone to those...  comes with the extraordinary territory) but "au contraire" is not about him.  He was quite idealistic and did believe that science serves mankind, and good science serves it well.  (He got screwed over by the less idealistic types, Thomas Edison et al.)  The quote was from his letter to his mother (whom he considered a greater inventor than himself -- minus education and opportunities, she merely invented things around the house to make her hard peasant work easier, brilliant practical innovations.)

 

2 hours ago, Cobie said:

In olden days in China, a gentleman did not waste his time on trying to understand these things. Instead all effort went into the cultivation of the self: the inner realm.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Early Confucians saw reality as being bifurcated into two distinct realms--"inner" and "outer".

And that ming ("fate") refers to the unpredictable forces in the outside realm, which are beyond the bounds of proper human endeavor. 

 

The vagaries of ming are not the concern of the gentleman, whose efforts and worries are to be focused on the cultivation of the self: the inner realm where "seeking helps one to get it." 

 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1399496?seq=1

 

 

 

That's confucian indeed, but taoists of antiquity were the first serious scientists, trying to understand many things and coming up with both theoretical frameworks some of which are only today being rediscovered (without giving credit of course), and practically inventing a whole lot of things we take for granted today.  (The list is very long and exceedingly impressive.  My favorite is a taoist nun who both invented vaccines -- in the 13th century! -- and insisted that they should never be mass administered or mandated -- going all the way to the emperor and successfully convincing him to reverse his mass vaccinations edict.)  Many, many taoists were cultivators of both ming and xing...  "leaving the world" and "coming into the world," emulating tao in this pattern.      

[Cobie]

26 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

What's the source of this opinion? 

Imo  no anprim with science

[Taomeow]

1 hour ago, Cobie said:

Imo  no anprim with science

 

It depends on your definitions I guess.  IMO "wild" science is science -- and superior to the "domesticated" kind -- but that's for a different thread. 

But if we're going to use computers, it makes me feel better about it when I take into account that they are based on the binary mathematics transmitted to Leibniz via correspondence with a missionary friend in China who translated and sent him the I Ching.  It was taoist sages who invented it... and who am I to tell them they weren't wild enough for my anprim ideals?   There's ideals and then there's reality, I try to judge each on its own terms.