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"If you can lay down two black stripes from the apex of one corner all the way to the braking zone of the next corner, you might have enough horsepower."
-Mark Donahue.
Note: This is coming from the man that mastered the art of driving the awe inspiring 1200hp plus Porsche 917-30 around some of the toughest tracks in the world and that still wasn't enough hp for him.
"Aerodynamics is for those that can't build engines."
-Enzo Ferrari.
I realize this is completely the wrong forum for those quotes but they are my favorites.
"I say we should take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
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"Never underestimate the power and beauty of human stupidity." Jesse Blankenship--a friend of mine.
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"Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid." -John Wayne (From "The Sands of Iwo Jima")
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What one should add here is that self-consciousness is itself unconscious: we are not aware of the point of our self-consciousness. If ever there was a critic of the fetishizing effect of fascinating and dazzling "leitmotifs", it is Adorno: in his devastating analysis of Wagner, he tries to demonstrate how Wagnerian leitmotifs serve as fetishized elements of easy recognition and thus constitute a kind of inner-structural commodification of his music. It is then a supreme irony that traces of this same fetishizing procedure can be found in Adorno's own writings. Many of his provocative one-liners do effectively capture a profound insight or at least touch on a crucial point (for example: "Nothing is more true in pscyhoanalysis than its exaggeration"); however, more often than his partisans are ready to admit, Adorno gets caught up in his own game, infatuated with his own ability to produce dazzlingly "effective" paradoxical aphorisms at the expense of theoretical substance (recall the famous line from Dialectic of Englightment on how Hollywood's ideological maniuplation of social reality realized Kant's idea of the transcendental constitution of reality). In such cases where the dazzling "effect" of the unexpected short-circuit (here between Hollywood cinema and Kantian ontology) effectively overshadows the theoretical line of argumentation, the brilliant paradox works precisely in the same manner as the Wagnerian leitmotif: instead of serving as a nodal point in the complex network of structural mediation, it generates idiotic pleasure by focusing attention on itself. This unintended self-reflexivity is something of which Adorno undoubtedly was not aware: his critique of the Wagnerian leitmotif was an allegorical critique of his own writing. Is this not an exemplary case of his unconscious reflexivity of thinking? When criticizing his opponent Wagner, Adorno effectively deploys a critical allegory of his own writing - in Hegelese, the truth of his relation to the Other is a self-relation
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Samprimary, can you simplify that? It was difficult for me to get the theme and message out of it. The context was difficult to grasp and I am confused as to what you were trying to communicate. Thank you.
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quote:Originally posted by M81: Samprimary, can you simplify that? It was difficult for me to get the theme and message out of it. The context was difficult to grasp and I am confused as to what you were trying to communicate. Thank you.
I think that's the point. He's very meta like that.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: What one should add here is that self-consciousness is itself unconscious: we are not aware of the point of our self-consciousness. If ever there was a critic of the fetishizing effect of fascinating and dazzling "leitmotifs", it is Adorno: in his devastating analysis of Wagner, he tries to demonstrate how Wagnerian leitmotifs serve as fetishized elements of easy recognition and thus constitute a kind of inner-structural commodification of his music. It is then a supreme irony that traces of this same fetishizing procedure can be found in Adorno's own writings. Many of his provocative one-liners do effectively capture a profound insight or at least touch on a crucial point (for example: "Nothing is more true in pscyhoanalysis than its exaggeration"); however, more often than his partisans are ready to admit, Adorno gets caught up in his own game, infatuated with his own ability to produce dazzlingly "effective" paradoxical aphorisms at the expense of theoretical substance (recall the famous line from Dialectic of Englightment on how Hollywood's ideological maniuplation of social reality realized Kant's idea of the transcendental constitution of reality). In such cases where the dazzling "effect" of the unexpected short-circuit (here between Hollywood cinema and Kantian ontology) effectively overshadows the theoretical line of argumentation, the brilliant paradox works precisely in the same manner as the Wagnerian leitmotif: instead of serving as a nodal point in the complex network of structural mediation, it generates idiotic pleasure by focusing attention on itself. This unintended self-reflexivity is something of which Adorno undoubtedly was not aware: his critique of the Wagnerian leitmotif was an allegorical critique of his own writing. Is this not an exemplary case of his unconscious reflexivity of thinking? When criticizing his opponent Wagner, Adorno effectively deploys a critical allegory of his own writing - in Hegelese, the truth of his relation to the Other is a self-relation
I don't know what book that's from, but Zizek definitely wrote it. It's especially funny that if you substitute "Zizek" for "Adorno," then the criticism is even more apropos.
Edit: Which of course ends up being evidence for the truth of what he's saying.
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"I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me." - Frank Costello, The DepartedPosts: 570 | Registered: Sep 2009
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And then I thought to myself, "You know, what they think of you is so fantastic, it's impossible to live up to it. You have no responsibility to live up to it!"
It was a brilliant idea: You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failure.
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,An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated." -Madelyn Murray O'Hair
"It's not true I had nothing on. I had the radio on." On reports of her nude photographs for a calendar, as quoted in TIME magazine (1952)
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quote:Originally posted by M81: Samprimary, can you simplify that? It was difficult for me to get the theme and message out of it. The context was difficult to grasp and I am confused as to what you were trying to communicate. Thank you.
oh that's just zizek, the dude who i have for some inexplicable reason decided to make a temporary focus, to really make sure I can process his statements and philosophy, and then incorporate him into a sense of (or critique of) the current state of Philosophy as an academic institution and community as it continues to cruise on a moribund orbit towards self-obsessed abstract-mostly-irrelevance
he makes an excellent candidate because he's so polarizing and possibly the picture of modern day philosophy itself
appropriately he's crazy so that helps
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Stanisław Lem, Fables for Robots, my poor translation. I just love the humor.
A young scholar lived on Actinuria, Pyron was his name. He learned how to draw a platinum wire so thin, that one could fashion a net out of it and then snatch clouds with the net. Pyron invented a wired telegraph and then he drew a wire so thin, that it was no more; thusly a wireless telegraph was created.
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quote:Originally posted by M81: Samprimary, can you simplify that? It was difficult for me to get the theme and message out of it. The context was difficult to grasp and I am confused as to what you were trying to communicate. Thank you.
oh that's just zizek, the dude who i have for some inexplicable reason decided to make a temporary focus, to really make sure I can process his statements and philosophy, and then incorporate him into a sense of (or critique of) the current state of Philosophy as an academic institution and community as it continues to cruise on a moribund orbit towards self-obsessed abstract-mostly-irrelevance
he makes an excellent candidate because he's so polarizing and possibly the picture of modern day philosophy itself
appropriately he's crazy so that helps
So you're reading him with a thesis already in mind? Doesn't that come perilously close to being an example of what the quote is talking about?
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i am reading him with a general approximation of the value of academic philosophy coalescing in my brain and figure i best get him out of the way before i pass any significant i'll-stand-by-this judgment on the value of spending my time caring about philosophy at all or investing any future time and effort on philosophy
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yes! let us return to and exceed hegel himself, as part of the zizekian editorialized crusade towards murderous idealized leninism
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When was the last time the popular reception of a philosopher was in any way accurate? It's a scourge that philosophy suffers from uniquely; sure, Darwin had social Darwinism and quantum physics has new age garbage, but the list of philosophers who have been watered down or twisted into silliness is much larger.
I'm sympathetic to the guy, though I'm a bit bewildered at his popularity. If you're already reading Less Than Nothing, then you don't really need this, but here's a nice little intro anyways:
quote:Originally posted by Sean Monahan: And then I thought to myself, "You know, what they think of you is so fantastic, it's impossible to live up to it. You have no responsibility to live up to it!"
It was a brilliant idea: You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failure.
- Richard Feynman
I love that quote. Such an interesting guy.
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quote:Originally posted by Foust: When was the last time the popular reception of a philosopher was in any way accurate? It's a scourge that philosophy suffers from uniquely; sure, Darwin had social Darwinism and quantum physics has new age garbage, but the list of philosophers who have been watered down or twisted into silliness is much larger.
I don't think i have any particular care or consideration for his popular reception, but i do admit that when the article says "he is one of the most engaging and thought-provoking writers working in philosophy today" my initial reaction is to think "i didn't know philosophy was in that much trouble"
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"Never take another person's dignity: it is worth everything to them and nothing to you." - Frank Barron
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I saw this thread and was about to post the Feynman quote, then saw that I had already done so 2 years ago.
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quote:Originally posted by Sean Monahan: "You know, what they think of you is so fantastic, it's impossible to live up to it. You have no responsibility to live up to it!"
It was a brilliant idea: You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failure.
That's a great one! ( I wish more people realized how this applies to OSC... )
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
One of my personal favorites. It is so comforting to look to the stars in Egypt or Los Angeles or Bangkok and recognize them as the same ones you see from your birthplace. <3
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Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx. MaybePosts: 46 | Registered: Jul 2015
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Joining the Feynman Love Club, I kept this quote from the Challenger accident report up on my whiteboard at work.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." -RPF
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