- It's all of technology they can't take.
- Somewhere are people who understand it and run it but those are technologists, and they speak an inhuman language when describing what they do.
- You can't really think hard about what you're doing and listen to the radio at the same time.
- When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things. I just want to get at it slowly, but carefully and thoroughly.
- If they can't stand physical discomfort and they can't stand technology, they've got a little compromising to do. They depend on technology and condemn it at the same time.
- A hang-up. You just sit and stare and think, and search randomly for new information, and go away and come back again, and after a while the unseen factors start to emerge.
- What we have here is a conflict of visions of reality. The world as you see it right here, right now, is reality, regardless of what the scientists say it might be.
- What you've got here, really, are two realities, one of immediate artistic appearance and one of underlying scientific explanation and they don't match and they don't fit and they don't have much of anything to do with one another.
- I want to divide human understanding into two kinds - classical understanding and romantic understanding.
- Both are valid ways of looking at the world although irreconcilable with each other.
- Mark Twain's experience comes to mind, in which, after he had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot the Mississippi River, he discovered the river had lost its beauty. Something is always killed.
- The ultimate purpose of life, which is to keep alive, is impossible, but that this is the ultimate purpose of life anyway, so great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose.
Part II
- To speak of certain government and establishment institutions as 'the system' is to speak correctly, since these organizations are founded upon the same structural conceptual relationships as a motorcycle. They are sustained by structural relationships even when they have lost all other meaning and purpose.
- To revolt against a government because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes ; and as long as the attack is upon the effects only, no change is possible.
- If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.
- It's a good day to be alive.
9
- hang up: contretemps
- gee-whiz: révolutionnaire
- juggernaut: pouvoir destructeur
- lumbering: lourd
- crank up: augmenter
- bluffs: bosquets
- That is induction: reasoning from particular experiences to general truths.
- Repair problems are not that hard.
- For this you keep a lab notebook. Everything gets written down, formally, so that you know at all times where you are, where you've been, where you're going and where you want to get.
- Sometimes just the act of writing down the problems straightens out your head as to what they really are.
- (1) statement of the problem, (2) hypotheses as to the cause of the problem, (3) experiments designed to test each hypothesis, (4) predicted results of the experiments, (5) observed results of the experiments and (6) conclusions from the results of the experiments.
10
- baffled: perplexe
- muddled: confus
- fetters: chaînes
- dreariness: monotone
- creepers: plantes grimpantes
- The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshipper or lover. The daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.
- What shortens the life-span of the existing truth is the volume of hypotheses offered to replace it.
- The more you look, the more you see.
- Sometimes I'd a little better to travel than to arrive.
11
- timberline: cîme
- creek: ruisseau
- play tag: jouer au loup
- aspen: tremble (arbre)
- prow: proue
- thatched: avec un toit de chaume
- nod: signe de tête
- cognizance: conscience
- shiver: frissonner
- stunted: rabougri
- broad-leafed: feuillus
- thaw: dégel
- airtight: irréfutable
- slumber: sommeil
- nits: poux
- It was at a level at which everything shifts and changes, at which institutional values and verities are gone and there is nothing but one's own spirit to keep one going. His early failure had released him from any felt obligation to think along institutional lines and his thoughts were already independent to a degree few people are familiar with. He felt that institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals it the service of these functions.
- He was actively in pursuit of something now.
- What does it all mean? What's the purpose of all this?
- The primitive tribes permitted far less individual freedom than does modern society.
- "That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt".
- If I were to go down to the bank and to ask to see my money they would look at me a little peculiarly. They don't have 'my money' in any little drawer that they can pull open to show me. 'My money' is nothing but some east-west and north-south magnetic domains in some iron oxide resting on a roll of tape in a computer storage bin. But I 'm satisfied with this because I've faith that if I need the thing that money enables, the bank will provide the means, through their checking system, of getting it.
- Tu es libre quand tu obéis à la loi que tu t'imposes en tant qu'être rationnel.
- Quel principe guide vraiment mon choix ?
- Avec son inversion copernicienne, Kant fait de l'esprit humain le centre actif de la connaissance, non un simple miroir passif du monde extérieur.
12
- whack: grand coup
- to gloss over: passer rapidement
- haywire: détraqué
- whacky: dingue
- miffed: vexé
- flunk: rater
- buff: musclé
- cocksure: arrogant
- blithely: gaiement
- miter: assembler
- honeysuckle: chèvrefeuille
- He became aware that the doctrinal differences among Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism.
13
- fright: effroi
- ludicrous: ridicule
- rammed: bondé
- hush: chut
- kinship: parenté
- contemptuous: méprisant
- rumblings: grondements
- You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
14
- livestock: bétail
- slant: pencher
- grate: grille
- trout: truite
- marshmallow: guimauve
- wistfully: avec mélancolie
- to veer away: se déporter
- non sequitur: sophisme
- letdown: déception
- nuts: cinglé
- kindling: petit bois
- brook: ruisseau
- slur: affront
- expound: énoncer
- to damn: condamner
- chopped-up: émincé
- contrive: planifier
- speechify: discourir
- ludicrous: absurde
- ugliness: laideur
- topsy-turvy: sans dessus dessous
- to vilify: diffamer
- quilt: couette
- For me a period of depression comes on when I reach a temporary goal like this and have to reorient myself toward another one.
- After you pick up skill, welding gives a tremendous feeling of power and control over the metal. You can do anything.
- If the machine produces tranquillity it's right. If it disturbs you it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.
- The art of work is just as dependent upon your own mind and spirit as it is upon the material of the machine. That's why you need the peace of mind.
- You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.
15
- baffled: perplexe
- to jell : se constituer
- mimicry: imitation
- eddy: tourbillon
- perfunctorily: machinalement
- backwash: contrecoup
- spine-tingling: chair de poule
- jolt: à coup
- to trot: trotter
- itsy-betsy: minuscule
- wearily: avec lassitude
- despondent: déprimé
- We’ve all changed…so much since you left
- That’s all over for me now. I’m doing other things
Part III
16
- duff: litière
- wrought: forgé
- partridge: perdrix
- dull: terne
- drudge: bête de somme
- stump: poser une colle
- dismissal: licenciement
- balky: entêté
- nonplussed: perplexe
- rote: répétition
- to loaf: traîner
- contemptuous: méprisant
- hunch: intuition
- to sprain an ankle: se fouler une cheville
- There are as many routes as there are individuals souls.
- For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see.
- To force them to look within themselves, the only place they would ever get a really right answer.
17
- marsh: marais
- to crouch: s'accroupir
- moose: élan
- jagged: dentelé
- to expound: énoncer
- outline: contour
- to jack up: augmenter
- abode: demeure
- holiness: sainteté
- selfless: désintéressé, altruiste
- To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.
- There is, in fact, no formal difference between inability to define and stupidity.
- He did't know where he was going. All he knew was that it worked.
- Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in a disaster. When you try to climb mountain to prove how big you are, you almost never make it. And even if you do, it's a hollow victory. In order to sustain the victory you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, and again and again and again, driven forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true and someone will find out. That's never the way.