Personal collection of quotes – why they resonate with me 2

It is 7 months and a few days since I set out my perspective on some of the statements I have come across in my reading and listening. So, it is time for a revisit, only those I have put in my personal scrap book since the last installment. Here they go.

‘When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie’ - Yevgeny Yevtushenko

‘Creating a silence requires only an instinct for avoiding conflict’ – George Monbiot

I thought hard on these. I take them to mean that to be a good citizen, one needs to talk when silence rules. Yes, you can lie, even in silence, by keeping silent. Break the silence and let truth be heard. If conflict ensued, so be it.

‘Evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty [my emphasis]. Facts are the world’s data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts’ - Stephen J Gould

Creationists – and I call them IDiots – make a fuss about Evolution by Natural Selection is only a theory. Yes says the celebrated scientist Stephen J Gould. Does that mean the scientist agrees with IDiots? Far from it. The statement above makes it clear what the theory under attack really is. It is a theory and a fact. The theory of evolution cannot become a fact because it already is! Take that you IDiots!  

‘The thing about teaching is we are never sure we are making a difference’ – James J Krupa (a biology professor at the University of Kentucky)

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an alumnus of University of Kentucky. I am teaching courses in Civil Engineering at a private university in Tamil Nadu. This is a career switch for me, after a long stint in consultancy to teaching, after retiring from the former. I have been, and continue to be, very diffident, not subject-wise but only in my effectiveness in reaching the students at a level deeper than scoring marks in exams. The above from a veteran of teaching biology gave me the necessary motivation to plough on, not alone but with at least one teacher with self-doubt.

‘[W]e’ve sacrificed silence — the condition of not being addressed. And just as clean air makes it possible to breathe, silence makes it possible to think’ – Mathew B. Crawford

This was in the context of how in this time and age, there is something or the other, be it facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, that is always talking to us and we are forced to listen. There is no silence. Long time ago, in a corporate sponsored workshop, I heard one thing and that struck me: we are never silent. We talk to ourselves continuously, even in silence. And, take this, we speak to ourselves at speeds in multiples of the speed in a regular conversation. My response to the quote is that even without the things listed out, we are never silent. Perhaps Buddhist monks are when they meditate. I do not know.

‘[O]ne consumes a great deal of silence in the course of becoming educated’ – Mathew B. Crawford

Students do a lot of group study, and some of them are indeed effective. This may be learning, but is it education? This is the question posed implicitly by the quote. I tend to answer no. Education, I have learned after living six decades, is through contemplation. But, I do not agree that contemplation is silence. I do not think Buddhist monks contemplate when they meditate. They just observe time pass. Perhaps this is what Socrates preached and practiced, silently!

‘Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder’ – Leon Kass

This is about as strong a statement as can be made about how no one escapes being scared. There can be no “shallow souls”. Mukesh Ambani could not have escaped and I definitely did not. Have you? I doubt it.

‘No matter how strong your math and science skills are, you still need to know how to learn, think and even write’ – Farid Zakaria

In the semester that is coming to a close soon, I taught a first year course on engineering mechanics, to a bunch of students majoring in Bio-technology, electrical engineering, ICT and similar fields. I told the class their subject-learning would be essentially useless in their career. But … I will endeavor to teach them how to learn. Yes, I used precisely these words. To see them being said by someone else, well, Dirty Harry would have said it best – “Made my day!”

‘I don’t think the dead care about vengeance’ – James Bond in Quantum of Solace

Well, even James Bond, who kills pretty much indiscriminately, is against death penalty! Those who endorse death penalty, then, are lower than Bond in my eyes!

Raghuram Ekambaram