Newer Quotes

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

We turn not older with years but newer every day.

Come friends, it's not too late to seek a newer world.

I’m a miserable cynic (a newer development) and a dreamy romantic (always have been), and it’s such a terrible combination that I don’t know how to tolerate myself.

Somewhere along the line, I started thinking that if I just got through this bad experience, this bad day, that tomorrow I’d have something better, brighter, newer. I still believe that. I still believe that there’s something good out there for me. I just have to keep going until my time comes.

Oh, seek, my love, your newer way; I'll not be left in sorrow. So long as I have yesterday, Go take your damned tomorrow!

It is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Mov’d earth and heaven, that which we are, we are: One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

An oak tree and a rosebush grew, Young and green together, Talking the talk of growing things- Wind and water and weather. And while the rosebush sweetly bloomed The oak tree grew so high That now it spoke of newer things- Eagles, mountain peaks and sky. "I guess you think you're pretty great," The rose was heard to cry, Screaming as loud as it possibly could To the treetop in the sky. "And now you have no time for flower talk, Now that you've grown so tall." "It's not so much that I've grown," said the tree, "It's just that you've stayed so small.

Tis not too late to seek a newer world

I tried telling myself it wasn’t because of me, but there are some thoughts that live in your mind like a chronic disease. You think you’ve finally crushed them, only to find them morphing into something newer, darker.

Come, my friends Tis not too late to seek a newer world Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die

Art Is a Way Out. Do not let life overwhelm you. When the old paths are choked with the débris of failure, look for newer and fresher paths. Art is just such a path. Art is distilled from suffering.

It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth's dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be left alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.

I'm not talking about YOUR book now, but look at how many books have already been written about the Holocaust. What's the point? People haven't changed... Maybe they need a newer, bigger Holocaust.

A hundred years from now, people will look back on us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer better fantasies... And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else.

Stages As every flower fades and as all youth Departs, so life at every stage, So every virtue, so our grasp of truth, Blooms in its day and may not last forever. Since life may summon us at every age Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor, Be ready bravely and without remorse To find new light that old ties cannot give. In all beginnings dwells a magic force For guarding us and helping us to live. Serenely let us move to distant places And let no sentiments of home detain us. The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces. If we accept a home of our own making, Familiar habit makes for indolence. We must prepare for parting and leave-taking Or else remain the slaves of permanence. Even the hour of our death may send Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces, And life may summon us to newer races. So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

It is in meeting the great tests that mankind can most successfully rise to great heights. Out of danger and restless insecurity comes the force that pushes mankind to newer and loftier conquests. Can you understand that? Can you understand that in averting the pitfalls and miseries that beset man, Eternity prevents men from finding their own bitter and better solutions, the real solutions that come from conquering difficulty, not avoiding it?

I love playing our older songs along with newer ones but If all I have is my old stuff, I quit. Creating is more rewarding.

Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth’s dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.

She stood with her nose up, sniffing delightedly. It was the delicious mildewy fragrance of old books. Hundreds of them, she saw, looking round the room. Books were lined up on shelves on all four walls, stacked on the floor, and piled on the desk, old books in leather covers mostly, although some of the ones on the floor had newer looking colored jackets.

And the purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

For many men, their car is equivalent to the perfect woman. We can build her to look exactly how we want, we can ride her hard and she won't complain, and we can easily trade her in when a newer, younger model comes along. It's pretty much the ideal relationship.

I am not worried if scientists go and explain everything. This is for a very simple reason: an impala sprinting across the Savannah can be reduced to biomechanics, and Bach can be reduced to counterpoint, yet that does not decrease one iota our ability to shiver as we experience impalas leaping or Bach thundering. We can only gain and grow with each discovery that there is structure underlying the most accessible levels of things that fill us with awe. But there is an even stronger reason why I am not afraid that scientists will inadvertently go and explain everything--it will never happen. While in certain realms, it may prove to be the case that science can explain anything, it will never explain everything. As should be obvious after all these pages, as part of the scientific process, for every question answered, a dozen newer ones are generated. And they are usually far more puzzling, more challenging than than the prior problems. This was stated wonderfully in a quote by a geneticist named Haldane earlier in the century: "Life is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." We will never have our flames extinguished by knowledge. The purpose of science is not to cure us of our sense of mystery and wonder, but to constantly reinvent and reinvigorate it.

In short, the Enlightenment privatized marriage, taking it out of the public sphere, and redefined its purpose as individual gratification, not any 'broader good' such as reflecting God's nature, producing character, or raising children. Slowly but surely, this newer understanding of the meaning of marriage has displaced the older ones in Western culture.

How sad was it that grief had a shelf life, he thought. It’s only fresh and raw for so long before it begins to spoil. And soon enough, it would be replaced by a newer, brighter heartache - the old one discarded and eventually forgotten. 

That night, I wash myself. The silky suds between my legs are the color and scent of rust, but I am newer than I have ever been.

When your skin touched my skin And your lips touched my lips The whole Universe paused! And when your Soul Collided with my Soul That's when newer Stars And Galaxies were formed!

The new car’s a lot prettier than Lucy, my Sweet Caroline—she’s a newer sedan, and, if I’m being perfectly honest, is actually a little bit of a risk. She’s flashier than what I’d usually pick. I just couldn’t resist her gorgeous shade of ruby red.

Everything that is great in life is the product of slow growth; the newer, and greater, and higher, and nobler the work, the slower is its growth, the surer is its lasting success. Mushrooms attain their full power in a night; oaks require decades. A fad lives its life in a few weeks; a philosophy lives through generations and centuries. If you are sure you are right, do not let the voice of the world, or of friends, or of family swerve you for a moment from your purpose.

Ours was now a country in which the cost of replacing a broken machine with a newer model was typically lower than the cost of having it fixed by an expert, which itself was typically lower than the cost of sourcing the parts and figuring out how to fix it yourself. This fact alone virtually guaranteed technological tyranny, which was perpetuated not by the technology itself but by the ignorance of everyone who used it daily and yet failed to understand it. To refuse to inform yourself about the basic operation and maintenance of the equipment you depended on was to passively accept that tyranny and agree to its terms: when your equipment works, you’ll work, but when your equipment breaks down you’ll break down, too. Your possessions would possess you.

Collisions are the fundamental life-giving processes of the universe. Ideas are no different. The best ideas come from collisions between newer and older ideas.

...I've gotten endless signs of the greatness of God's love and hilarious care, but I always end up needing a newer sign, maybe one that is cuter and more spangly.

My skill, if I have one, isn’t dancing. It’s my ability to believe that tomorrow can be a better day. I don’t really know where I got this optimism. Maybe it was from Mom. Somewhere along the line, I started thinking that if I just got through this bad experience, this bad day, that tomorrow I’d have something better, brighter, newer. I still believe that. I still believe that there’s something good out there for me. I just have to keep going until my time comes, because surely, surely, none of this would happen if there wasn’t a reward down the line.

Everyone wants to be a God. We manufacture our own worlds, duping ourselves with things to escape the reality we call our lives. Drugs, alcohol, sex, work, school. Bigger houses, newer cars and designer clothes are the universes we invent to exert our god-like rule. We can't control the weather, but it's always a perfect seventy-two degrees in our central-air controlled worlds.

If a product or enterprise doesn't constantly reinvent itself, it is superseded, cast aside, abandoned without sentiment in favor of something bigger, newer, and, alas, nearly always uglier.

God is not glorified when we keep for ourselves (no matter how thankfully) what we ought to be using to alleviate the misery of unevangelized, uneducated, unmedicated, and unfed millions. The evidence that many professing Christians have been deceived by this doctrine is how little they give and how much they own. God has prospered them. And by an almost irresistible law of consumer culture (baptized by a doctrine of health, wealth, and prosperity) they have bought bigger (and more) houses, newer (and more) cars, fancier (and more) clothes, better (and more) meat, and all manner of trinkets and gadgets and containers and devices and equipment to make life more fun. They will object: Does not the Old Testament promise that God will prosper his people? Indeed! God increases our yield, so that by giving we can prove our yield is not our god. God does not prosper a man's business so that he can move from a Ford to a Cadillac. God prospers a business so that 17,000 unreached people can be reached with the gospel. He prospers the business so that 12 percent of the world's population can move a step back from the precipice of starvation.

These cities grew in approximately the same places as our cities do now, however different the shape of the continents was. There was even a New York that in some way resembled the New York familiar to all of you, but was much newer, or, rather, more awash with new products, new toothbrushes, a New York with its own Manhattan that stretched out dense with skyscrapers gleaming like the nylon bristles of a brand-new toothbrush.

Endings are abstruse, mystic and unreal. They are but depleted beginnings purposed to be substituted with newer ones.A transition of outlook and time, similar to our differing moods before and after slumber. Before the act we witness an exhaustion, a sulkiness but on gaining consciousness, we’re rejuvenated and good humored. The wakefulness is the new beginning whereas the tension the disturbance we perceive each night is the weariness of the beginnings, of each day. So there never really is an end, all that there are are beginnings.Beginnings which are promising, which offer hope, which have a new leash on life, which neither denounce nor belittle rather soothe and console by reconstructing the broken pieces of yesterday, mending them and reinforcing them with courage and beauty like never before.

If we keep practicing, we gain fluency; basic skills are mastered, allowing us to take on newer and more exciting challenges.

Worrying about what other people were doing was a waste of time and energy; I’d learned that as a kid when other girls had nicer costumes and newer skates than me. Being jealous and bitter was what people who didn’t have anything better to do, did. I knew that. No one did anything with their lives if they spent it comparing themselves to other people. I knew that too. And I never wanted to be that person.

You have a mismatched pair of genetic characteristics. Either alone would have been useful, would have aided the survival of your species. But the two together are lethal. It was only a matter of time before they destroyed you." [...] Jdahya made a rustling noise that could have been a sigh, but that did not seem to comer from his mouth or throat. "You are intelligent," he said. "That's the newer of the two characteristics, and the one you might have put to work to save yourselves. You are potentially one of the most intelligent species we've found, though your focus is different from ours. Still, you had a good start in the life sciences, and even in genetics." "What's the second characteristic?" "You are hierarchical. That's the older and more entrenched characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It's a terrestrial characteristic. When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as problem, but took pride in it or din not notice it at all..." The rattling sounded again.

As the British Empire fell, the Afrikaner rose up to claim South Africa as his rightful inheritance. To maintain power in the face of the country’s rising and restless black majority, the government realized they needed a newer and more robust set of tools. They set up a formal commission to go out and study institutionalized racism all over the world. They went to Australia. They went to the Netherlands. They went to America. They saw what worked, what didn’t. Then they came back and published a report, and the government used that knowledge to build the most advanced system of racial oppression known to man. Apartheid was a police state, a system of surveillance and laws designed to keep black people under total control. A full compendium of those laws would run more than three thousand pages and weigh approximately ten pounds, but the general thrust of it should be easy enough for any American to understand. In America you had the forced removal of the native onto reservations coupled with slavery followed by segregation. Imagine all three of those things happening to the same group of people at the same time. That was apartheid.

We’ve lost the real Jesus—or at least exchanged him for a newer, safer, sanitized, ineffectual one. We’ve created a Christian subculture that comes with its own set of customs, rules, rituals, paradigms, and products that are nowhere near the rugged, revolutionary faith of biblical Christianity. In our subculture Jesus would have never been crucified—he’s too nice.

Time. Particles of darkness configured mysterious patterns on my retina. Patterns that degenerated without a sound, only to be replaced by new patterns. Darkness but darkness alone was shifting, like mercury in motionless space. I put a stop to my thoughts and let time pass. Let time carry me along. Carry me to where a new darkness was configuring yet newer patterns.

The very shaping of history now outpaces the ability of men to orient themselves in accordance with cherished values. Even when they do not panic men often sense that older ways off feeling and thinking have collapsed and that newer beginnings are ambiguous to the point of stasis.

Michael looked around the beautiful garden with its many colored flowers, fragrant lemon trees, the old statures of the gods dug from ancient ruins, other newer ones of holy saints, the rose-colored walls across the villa. It was a lovely setting for the examination of twelve murderous apostles.

the AirCav now rode to battle on helicopters, usually Hueys,85 which could carry a full squad; or on the newer, giant twin-engine Chinooks,

It is not over, this birthing. There are always newer skies into which God can throw stars.

The newer people, of this modern age, are more eager to amass than to realize.

Don't be so sure that your version of reality is better because it's newer.

Ours was now a country in which the cost of replacing a broken machine with a newer model was typically lower than the cost of having it fixed by an expert,

Would a house like this ever be fully settled? Or would it ache and moan until the end of time, until all the newer, shodier houses had fallen to ruins around it?

The problem is this. We worship the new instead of the eternal. And when we worship the new, we are always changing our allegiances, because there will always be something newer. Look

Sometimes the newer kids who won’t even let him near them come in and set the resistance on the shoulder-pull at a weight greater than their own weight. The guru on the towel dispenser just sits there and smiles and doesn’t say anything. They hunker, then, and grimace, and try to pull the bar down, but, like, lo: the overweighted shoulder-pull becomes a chin-up. Up they go, their own bodies, toward the bar they’re trying to pull down. Everyone should get at least one good look at the eyes of a man who finds himself rising toward what he wants to pull down to himself.

Memories are like that. They live between synapses and between the people who hold them. Memories, even epic ones, are perishable from their very formation even in people who don't soak their brains in mood-altering chemicals. There is only so much space on any one person's hard drive, and old memories are prone to replacement by newer ones.

You and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks, The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die.

Arinaas’s flame might char my skin and break my bones, but in the end I would emerge remade, newer and stronger and a version of myself no one could snuff out. I’d prayed for a sign, for hope, for a purpose in being sent to the Ziyaana.

Inside our skulls are fish, reptile and shrew brains, as well as the highest centers that allow us to integrate information in our unique way; and some of our newer brain components talk to each other via some very ancient structures indeed. Our brains are makeshift structures, opportunistically assembled by Nature over hundreds of millions of years, and in multiple different ecological contexts.

Remember, Thursday, that scientific thought -- indeed, any mode of thought, whether it be religious or philosophical or anything else -- is just like the fashions that we wear -- only much longer lived. It's a little like a boy band." "Scientific thought a boy band? How do you figure that?" "Well, every now and then a boy band comes along. We like it, buy the records, posters, parade them on TV, idolise them right up until --" ... "-- the next boy band?" I suggested. "Precisely. Aristotle was a boy band. A very good one but only number six or seven. He was the best boy band until Isaac Newton, but even Newton was transplanted by an even newer boy band. Same haircuts -- but different moves." "Einstein, right?" "Right. Do you see what I'm saying?" "I think so." "Good. So try and think of maybe thirty or forty boy bands past Einstein. To where we would regard Einstein as someone who glimpsed a truth, played one good chord on seven forgettable albums." "Where is this going, Dad?" "I'm nearly there. Imagine a boy band so good that you never needed another boy band ever again. Can you imagine that?

Westward on the high-hilled plains Where for me the world began, Still, I think, in newer veins Frets the changeless blood of man. ... There, when hueless is the west And the darkness hushes wide, Where the lad lies down to rest Stands the troubled dream beside. There, on thoughts that once were mine, Day looks down the eastern steep, And the youth at morning shine Makes the vow he will not keep.

Take most people, they're crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they're always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that's even newer. I don't even like old cars. I mean they don't even interest me. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.

The very first time I saw you,” Daniel continued, “it wasn’t any different than any other time I’ve seen you since. The world was newer, but you were just the same. It was—” “Love at first sight.” That part she knew.He nodded. “Just like always. The only difference was, in the beginning, you were offlimits to me. I was being punished, and I’d fallen for you at the worst possible time. Things were very violent in Heaven. Because of who … I am … I was expected to stay away from you. You were a distraction. The focus was supposed to be on winning the war. It’s the same war that’s still going on.” He sighed. “And if you haven’t noticed, I’m still very distracted.

He had used it as the epigram to his 1967 book 'To Seek a Newer World,' and it expressed two pillars of his faith: that everyone has a duty to alleviate suffering, and that no one can live a fully happy life while surrounded by the unaddressed misery of others.

I’ll put some ice in your coffee, to cover up the fact that it was already cold and old. I do this because my love for you is slightly warmer and newer.

Did you ever get fed up?" I said. "I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something? I mean do you like school and all that stuff?" "It's a terrific bore." "I mean do you hate it? I know it's a terrific bore, but do you hate it, is what I mean." "Well, I don't exactly hate it. You always have to--" "Well, I hate it. Boy, do I hate it," I said. "But it isn't just that. It's everything. I hate living in New York and all. Taxicabs, and Madison Avenue buses, with the drivers and all always yelling at you to get out at the rear door, and being introduced to phony guys that call the Lunts angels, and going up and down in elevators when you just want to go outside, and guys fitting your pants all the time at Brooks, and people always--" "Don't shout, please," old Sally said. Which was very funny, because I wasn't even shouting. "Take cars," I said. I said it in this very quiet voice. "Take most people, they're crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they're always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that's even newer. I don't even like old cars. I mean they don't even interest me. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake. A horse you can at least--" "I don't know what you're even talking about," old Sally said. "You jump from one--" "You know something?" I said. You're probably the only reason I'm in New York right now, or anywhere. If you weren't around, I'd probably be someplace way the hell off. In the woods or some goddam place. You're the only reason I'm around, practically." "You're sweet," she said. But you could tell she wanted me to change the damn subject. "You ought to go to a boys' school sometime. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the basketball team stuck together, the Catholics stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together. If you try to have a little intelligent--" "Now, listen," old Sally said. "Lots of boys get more out of school that that." "I agree! I agree they do, some of them! But that's all I get out of it. See? That's my point. That's exactly my goddamn point," I said. "I don't get hardly anything out of anything. I'm in bad shape. I'm in lousy shape." "You certainly are.

As she left her parents' neighborhood, the houses got newer and bigger and boxier. Through windows with no mullions or fake plastic mullions she could see luminous screens, some giant, some miniature. Evidently every hour of the year, including this one, was a good hour for staring at a screen.

Life is a combo of attachment and detachment. Love is the most natural thing and you are bound to get attached to persons, places and things. However, while getting attached so, you should know that all these attachments too have an expiry date. It's exactly at that point that the art of detachment helps. Persons, places and things are meant for specific periods in life after which you should know how to let go and embrace newer things. The world is beautiful and you should have belief in Him.

Science is progressive and self-correcting: no significantly erroneous conclusions or false hypotheses can be sustained for long, as newer observations will ultimately knock down incorrect constructs. But over a long period of time, a consistent set of observations sometimes emerges that leads to a new framework of understanding. That framework is then given a much more substantive description, and is called a “theory”—the theory of gravitation, the theory of relativity, or the germ theory, for instance.

Regardless of what you have been through or where you’re going, I hope you’re still able to soar to newer heights. I hope you find what you’re looking for whether it’s in faraway lands or at the base of your feet. I hope you find your joy again and laugh so hard your stomach muscles ache for days. I hope you keep the company of good friends and lovers who are worthy of your radiance. I hope you are finally able to reach that deep inner peace hidden within your bones. Most importantly, I hope you find yourself. And when you do, I hope you find that you were always a miraculous and spectacular being, worthy of the greatest love and the deepest peace. I honor you in hopes that you will one day learn to honor yourself.

James Heron stepped from the personal transport as Herbert, the family’s outmoded android butler, opened the front door of Scrabo Farm. There were infinitely more efficient and newer model android servants available, but neither James Heron nor his sister Niamh L’Estrange would dream of scrapping the mechanical attendant that had served the family so well, and enlivened their childhood with its fussy care of them both. “Hello, Herbert, is my sister home?” Answering in the slightly mechanical voice that James had liked so much when he was a boy, Herbert said, “She is in her study, Captain. I have alerted her to your arrival.

Technology is blamed for a lot of this loneliness, since the loneliness is certainly associated with the newer technological devices—TV, jets, freeways and so on—but I hope it’s been made plain that the real evil isn’t the objects of technology but the tendency of technology to isolate people into lonely attitudes of objectivity. It’s the objectivity, the dualistic way of looking at things underlying technology, that produces the evil.

What happened yesterday…that’s not a story lost amid newer headlines. A few news clips that’ll be buried under more news clips. An event that’ll be forgotten come 2002. What happened yesterday will never fade. We will never forget. For the sake of the soldier, the first responder, the dead, the dying, and the grieving...for the sake of America and every person who ever lived or ever will live in our great country...we will never forget.

I had a reputation of being merciless at times. After a particularly busy night working with me, one of the newer backservers nursed his wounds over a beer and complained that I had ridden him hard. After that, I tried to take it easy on Seabiscuit, as we subsequently called him. When he worked hard and fast, I called him Bisquick.

Finally, he sighed and suggested, “How about you lay it all out? Tell her everything.” I blinked once, slowly, then glared at my brother. “I don’t like that advice. That’s seriously shitty advice.” He lifted an eyebrow at me. “It’s your advice. It’s what you’ve been telling me to do with,” his eyes dropped and he took a breath before continuing, “with Scarlet...” “It’s still shitty advice. I have no idea of knowing what’s in her head. What if she rejects me?” My words pulled a small smile from him. Even so, I added, “I hope you didn’t take it.” He shook his head. “She’d have to agree to talk to me first.” I examined my brother. “You and I might be sharing a boat.” “Yeah, but your boat is newer.

Archaeological, mythological and historical evidence all reveal that the female religion, far from naturally fading away, was the victim of centuries of continual persecution and suppression by the advocates of the newer religions which held male deities as supreme. And from these new religions came the creation myth of Adam and Eve and the tale of the loss of Paradise.

drive through hell the people are weary, unhappy and frustrated, the people are bitter and vengeful, the people are deluded and fearful, the people are angry and uninventive and I drive among them on the freeway and they project what is left of themselves in their manner of driving— some more hateful, more thwarted than others— some don’t like to be passed, some attempt to keep others from passing —some attempt to block lane changes —some hate cars of a newer, more expensive model —others in these cars hate the older cars. the freeway is a circus of cheap and petty emotions, it’s humanity on the move, most of them coming from some place they hated and going to another they hate just as much or more. the freeways are a lesson in what we have become and most of the crashes and deaths are the collision of incomplete beings, of pitiful and demented lives. when I drive the freeways I see the soul of humanity of my city and it’s ugly, ugly, ugly: the living have choked the heart away.

The older Puritans had trampled down all fleshly impulses; these newer Puritans trampled no less self-righteously upon the spiritual cravings. But in the increasingly spiritistic inclination of physics itself, Behaviorism and Fundamentalism had found a meeting place. Since the ultimate stuff of the physical universe was now said to be multitudinous and arbitrary “quanta” of the activity “spirits”, how easy was it for the materialistic and the spiritistic to agree? At heart, indeed, they were never very far apart in mood, though opposed in doctrine. The real cleavage was between the truly spiritual view on the one hand, and the spiritistic and materialistic on the other. Thus the most materialistic of Christian sects and the most doctrinaire of scientific sects were not long in finding a formula to express their unity, their denial of all those finer capacities which had emerged to be the spirit of man.

Lately, even the Waybacklist borrowers seem to be missing. Have they Been seduced by some other book club on the other side of town? Have they all bought Kindles? I have one, and I use it most nights. I always imagine the books staring and whispering, Traitor! - but come on, I have a lot of free first chapters to get through. My Kindle is a hand-me-down from my dad, one of the original models<...> There are newer Kindles with bigger screens and subtler industrial design, but this one is like Penumbra's postcards: so uncool it's cool again.

The man was of fine figure, swarthy, and stern in aspect; and he showed in profile a facial angle so slightly inclined as to be almost perpendicular. He wore a short jacket of brown corduroy, newer than the remainder of his suit, which was a fustian waistcoat with white horn buttons, breeches of the same, tanned leggings, and a straw hat overlaid with black glazed canvas. At his back he carried by a looped strap a rush basket, from which protruded at one end the crutch of a hay-knife, a wimble for hay-bonds being also visible in the aperture. His measured, springless walk was the walk of the skilled countryman as distinct from the desultory shamble of the general labourer; while in the turn and plant of each foot there was, further, a dogged and cynical indifference personal to himself, showing its presence even in the regularly interchanging fustian folds, now in the left leg, now in the right, as he paced along.

In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting , to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself.

an aristocracy come to power, convinced of its own disinterested quality, believing itself above both petty partisan interest and material greed. The suggestion that this also meant the holding and wielding of power was judged offensive by these same people, who preferred to view their role as service, though in fact this was typical of an era when many of the great rich families withdrew from the new restless grab for money of a modernizing America, and having already made their particular fortunes, turned to the public arena as a means of exercising power. They were viewed as reformers, though the reforms would be aimed more at the newer seekers of wealth than at those who already held it. (“First-generation millionaires,” Garry Wills wrote in Nixon Agonistes, “give us libraries, second-generation millionaires give us themselves.”)

The Environmental Protection Agency now warns us that indoor air pollution is the nation's number one environmental threat to health- and it's from two to ten times worse than outdoor air pollution. A child indoors is more susceptible to spore of toxic molds growing under that plush carpet; or bacteria or allergens carried by household vermin; or carbon monoxide, radon and lead dust. The allergen level of newer, sealed buildings can be as much as two hundred times greater than that of older structures.

The genius of the heart, that makes everything loud and complacent fall silent and learn to listen, that smoothes out rough souls and gives them the taste of a new desire—to lie still, like a mirror that the deep sky can mirror itself upon…they are made richer in themselves, newer than before, broken open, sounded out by a thawing wind, perhaps less certain, more gentle, fragile, and broken, but full of hopes that do not have names yet, full of new wills and currents, of indignations and countercurrents…

Find a man who buys the half-dilapidated fixer-upper and not the guy who buys the brand new model. The guy who can see potential and is willing to roll up his sleeves and get to work and make it the best it can possible be, who will love discovering all the hidden gems hidden inside, all the history, all the layers, that's the kind of man you want to settle down with; not the guy who only sees the pretty, the perfect. Because one day, that pretty and perfect will need work. And he won't want to do that. He will just move on to the newer and prettier.

Thorne shrugged. "They're still just fantasies. They're not real. Have you ever seen a self-esteem? Can you bring me one on a plate? How about a photon? Can you bring me one of those?" Kelly shook her head. "No, but. . ." "And you never will, because those things don't exist. No matter how seriously people take them," Thorne said. "A hundred years from now, people will look back at us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer and better fantasies." Thorne shook his head. "And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. You see all of us together? That's real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else.

What the gods are supposed to be, what the priests are commissioned to say, is not a sensational secret like what those running messengers of the Gospel had to say. Nobody else except those messengers has any Gospel; nobody else has any good news; for the simple reason that nobody else has any news. Those runners gather impetus as they run. Ages afterwards they still speak as if something had just happened. They have not lost the speed and momentum of messengers; they have hardly lost, as it were, the wild eyes of witnesses. In the Catholic Church, which is the cohort of the message, there are still those headlong acts of holiness that speak of something rapid and recent; a self-sacrifice that startles the world like a suicide. But it is not a suicide; it is not pessimistic; it is still as optimistic as St. Francis of the flowers and birds. It is newer in spirit than the newest schools of thought; and it is almost certainly on the eve of new triumphs. For these men serve a mother who seems to grow more beautiful as new generations rise up and call her blessed. We might sometimes fancy that the Church grows younger as the world grows old.

People have this belief that what we believe is the effect of the facts that we’re exposed to, and therefore, if we expose people to different and newer facts, they will change their beliefs. This is not true. […] The contents of people’s minds, the belief systems that they hold, are in no way, shape or form a result of any objective evaluation of information. The prejudices are inherited. They are socially inflicted. They are propagandized in school, in church, in communities, in families. They are reinforced by endless bouts of patriotic media and other sorts of nonsense. People are just an emotional Gordian knot, kaleidoscopic clusterfrack of prior prejudices [which have been] stuffed into their heads and held aloft by the spears of social approval or ostracism. Everybody is prejudiced, almost, and everybody maintains those prejudices for fear of social attack, ostracism, or disapproval. Because people haven’t been reasoned into their beliefs, they can’t be reasoned out of their beliefs, [and] when people have existing prejudices, showing them facts that run counter to those prejudices does not dislodge them. In fact, statistically, it is more likely to make those prejudices stronger.

It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel; I will drink life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those that loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known---cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honored of them all--- And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades Forever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end. To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains; but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This is my son, my own Telemachus, To whom I leave the scepter and the isle--- Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill This labor, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and through soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail; There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me--- That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads---you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honor and his toil. Death closes all; but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks; The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are--- One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Many cultural stories worldwide present the domination system as the only human alternative. Fairy tales romanticize the rule of kings and queens over “common people.” Classics such as Homers Illiad and Shakespeare’s kings trilogy romanticize “Heroic violence.” Many religious stories present men’s control, even ownership, of women as normal and moral. These stories came out of the times that oriented much more closely to a “pure” domination system. Along with newer stories that perpetuate these limited beliefs about human nature, they play a major role in how we view our world and how we live in it. But precisely because stories are so important in shaping values, new narratives can help change unhealthy values. Of particular importance are new stories about human nature. We need new narratives that give us a more complete and accurate picture of who we are and who we can be - stories that show that our enormous capacities for consciousness, creativity and caring are integral to human evolution, that these capacities are what make us distinctively human.

Hickock whistled and rolled his eyes. "Wow!" he said, and then, summoning his talent for something very like total recall, he began an account of the long ride--the approximately ten thousand miles he and Smith had covered in the past six weeks. He talked for an hour and twenty-five minutes--from two-fifty to four-fifteen--and told, while Nye attempted to list them, of highways and hotels, motels, rivers, towns, and cities, a chorus of entwining names: Apache, El Paso, Corpus Christi, Santillo, San Luis Potosi, Acapulco, San Diego, Dallas, Omaha, Sweetwater, Stillwater, Tenville Junction, Tallahassee, Needles, Miami, Hotel Nuevo Waldorf, Somerset Hotel, Hotel Simone, Arrowhead Motel, Cherokee Motel, and many, many more. He gave them the name of the man in Mexico to whom he'd sold his own 1940 Chevrolet, and confessed that he had stolen a newer model in Iowa.

Deep thinking and learning is also taxing on our energy stores, and so we require simplification and reinforcement. Our minds, through repetition or emotion, learn things and then, having committed them to memory, rely on this information and often never question it again; we put our energy into other things we deem more important. Like building a structure with a strong base, we make our mental models the foundation for adding newer information. We notice things that match our view and we dismiss things that do not. As we build our narrow knowledge on top of that foundation, we might not even realize when the foundation itself is weak. And so, as we go on with our lives, filtering a massive amount of information, we can easily become blind to important information, caught in our own bubbles, disregarding some information or alternative views, even when it might be helpful to us. Our decisions are shaped by what we regard as the facts, and if new information emerges that belies what we believe, it often hardens us to our original view.

We must first begin again to learn "'learning" and to know standards of measure. Cultural dissolution will not be abated by the mere introduction of newer and more convenient "textbooks." The youth must not wait until more fundamental acquaintance and actual contemplation are demanded of them from above, for it is precisely the other way around. It is the prerogative of a true and wakeful youth to develop exhortations to knowledge from out of itself, and to cling to these exhortations for itself, in order to construct the future. Whether one occasionally "reads a book" is a measure for the petite bourgeoisie. It does not ask whether today's man, who gets his "education" from "charts" and "magazines," from radio reports and movie theaters. whether such a confused, dizzy, and purely American man still knows, or can know, what "reading" means.

At the time of our hike, the Appalachian Trail was fifty-nine years old. That is, by American standards, incredibly venerable. The Oregon and Santa Fe trails didn't last as long. Route 66 didn't last as long. The old coast-to-coast Lincoln Highway, a road that brought transforming wealth and life to hundreds of little towns, so important and familiar that it became known as "America's Main Street," didn't last as long. Nothing in America does. If a product or enterprise doesn't constantly reinvent itself, it is superseded, cast aside, abandoned without sentiment in favor of something bigger, newer, and, alas, nearly always uglier. And then there is the good old AT, still quietly ticking along after six decades, unassuming, splendid, faithful to its founding principles, sweetly unaware that the world has quite moved on. It's a miracle really.

Once there were three tribes. The Optimists, whose patron saints were Drake and Sagan, believed in a universe crawling with gentle intelligence—spiritual brethren vaster and more enlightened than we, a great galactic siblinghood into whose ranks we would someday ascend. Surely, said the Optimists, space travel implies enlightenment, for it requires the control of great destructive energies. Any race which can't rise above its own brutal instincts will wipe itself out long before it learns to bridge the interstellar gulf. Across from the Optimists sat the Pessimists, who genuflected before graven images of Saint Fermi and a host of lesser lightweights. The Pessimists envisioned a lonely universe full of dead rocks and prokaryotic slime. The odds are just too low, they insisted. Too many rogues, too much radiation, too much eccentricity in too many orbits. It is a surpassing miracle that even one Earth exists; to hope for many is to abandon reason and embrace religious mania. After all, the universe is fourteen billion years old: if the galaxy were alive with intelligence, wouldn't it be here by now? Equidistant to the other two tribes sat the Historians. They didn't have too many thoughts on the probable prevalence of intelligent, spacefaring extraterrestrials— but if there are any, they said, they're not just going to be smart. They're going to be mean. It might seem almost too obvious a conclusion. What is Human history, if not an ongoing succession of greater technologies grinding lesser ones beneath their boots? But the subject wasn't merely Human history, or the unfair advantage that tools gave to any given side; the oppressed snatch up advanced weaponry as readily as the oppressor, given half a chance. No, the real issue was how those tools got there in the first place. The real issue was what tools are for. To the Historians, tools existed for only one reason: to force the universe into unnatural shapes. They treated nature as an enemy, they were by definition a rebellion against the way things were. Technology is a stunted thing in benign environments, it never thrived in any culture gripped by belief in natural harmony. Why invent fusion reactors if your climate is comfortable, if your food is abundant? Why build fortresses if you have no enemies? Why force change upon a world which poses no threat? Human civilization had a lot of branches, not so long ago. Even into the twenty-first century, a few isolated tribes had barely developed stone tools. Some settled down with agriculture. Others weren't content until they had ended nature itself, still others until they'd built cities in space. We all rested eventually, though. Each new technology trampled lesser ones, climbed to some complacent asymptote, and stopped—until my own mother packed herself away like a larva in honeycomb, softened by machinery, robbed of incentive by her own contentment. But history never said that everyone had to stop where we did. It only suggested that those who had stopped no longer struggled for existence. There could be other, more hellish worlds where the best Human technology would crumble, where the environment was still the enemy, where the only survivors were those who fought back with sharper tools and stronger empires. The threats contained in those environments would not be simple ones. Harsh weather and natural disasters either kill you or they don't, and once conquered—or adapted to— they lose their relevance. No, the only environmental factors that continued to matter were those that fought back, that countered new strategies with newer ones, that forced their enemies to scale ever-greater heights just to stay alive. Ultimately, the only enemy that mattered was an intelligent one. And if the best toys do end up in the hands of those who've never forgotten that life itself is an act of war against intelligent opponents, what does that say about a race whose machines travel between the stars?

Because people like stuff. New stuff, even newer stuff. Stuff to replace old stuff with and old stuff that is so old it becomes retro stuff and starts being used instead of new stuff. Let me tell you, it's fun stuff. Sometimes we have to get rid of stuff to make room for new stuff. And then we start to miss the old stuff so much that we have to build new stuff that pretends to be the old stuff. Like when we put TV screens on the treadmills at the gym and then play videos of trees on them so that we feel like we're running through the forest. Yes, I know what you're thinking. Why don't you just go running into the forest to begin with? and it's completely ok to wonder that. You don't know any better. But you see, we had to cut down the trees in the forest in order to build a highway so we could drive our cars to the gym. And yes, I can already see what you're thinking: Why did you have to cut down the trees? But hey, what did you want us to do? They were standing in the middle of the highway. It's complicated stuff to explain.

The whole world has been asking for the same these thousands of years. There is, again, the universal dissatisfaction. We make an ideal but we have rushed only half the way after it when we make a newer one. We struggle hard to attain to some goal and then discover we do not want it. This dissatisfaction we are having time after time, and what is there in the mind if there is to be only dissatisfaction? What is the meaning of this universal dissatisfaction? It is because freedom is every man's goal. He seeks it ever, his whole life is a struggle after it. The child rebels against law as soon as it is born. Its first utterance is a cry, a protest against the bondage in which it finds itself. This longing for freedom produces the idea of a Being who is absolutely free. The concept of God is a fundamental element in the human constitution. In the Vedanta, Sat-chit-ânanda (Existence-Knowledge-Bliss) is the highest concept of God possible to the mind. It is the essence of knowledge and is by its nature the essence of bliss. We have been stifling that inner voice long enough, seeking to follow law and quiet the human nature, but there is that human instinct to rebel against nature's laws. We may not understand what the meaning is, but there is that unconscious struggle of the human with the spiritual, of the lower with the higher mind, and the struggle attempts to preserve one's separate life, what we call our "individuality".

(...)because Miss Temple has generally something to say which is newer than my own reflections; her language is singularly agreeable to me, and the information she communicates is often just what I wished to gain.” “Well, then, with Miss Temple you are good?” “Yes, in a passive way: I make no effort; I follow as inclination guides me. There is no merit in such goodness.” “A great deal: you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should—so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.” “You will change your mind, I hope, when you grow older: as yet you are but a little untaught girl.” “But I feel this, Helen; I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved.” “Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine, but Christians and civilised nations disown it.” “How? I don’t understand.” “It is not violence that best overcomes hate—nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.” “What then?” “Read the New Testament, and observe what Christ says, and how He acts; make His word your rule, and His conduct your example.” “What does He say?” “Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you.

John watched the pale black road, and he remembered a single moment during his time away in the wilderness. He wished he had told Doris about it-a single moment in Needles, California, months and months ago, facing west in the late afternoon. There had been a heavy rainstorm over just a small, localized patch of the desert, and from the patch beside it, a dust storm blew in. The sun caught the dust and the moisture in a way John had never seen before, and even though he knew it was backward, it seemed to him the sun was radiating black sunbeams down onto the earth, onto Interstate 40 and the silver river of endless pioneers that flowed from one part of the continent to the other. John felt that he and everybody in the New World was a part of a mixed curse and blessing from God, that they were a race of strangers, perpetually casting themselves into new fires, yearning to burn, yearning to rise from the charcoal, always newer and more wonderful, always thirsty, always starving, always believing that whatever came to them next would mercifully erase the creatures they'd already become as they crawled along the plastic radiant way.

When General Genius built the first mentar [Artificial Intelligence] mind in the last half of the twenty-first century, it based its design on the only proven conscious material then known, namely, our brains. Specifically, the complex structure of our synaptic network. Scientists substituted an electrochemical substrate for our slower, messier biological one. Our brains are an evolutionary hodgepodge of newer structures built on top of more ancient ones, a jury-rigged system that has gotten us this far, despite its inefficiency, but was crying out for a top-to-bottom overhaul. Or so the General genius engineers presumed. One of their chief goals was to make minds as portable as possible, to be easily transferred, stored, and active in multiple media: electronic, chemical, photonic, you name it. Thus there didn't seem to be a need for a mentar body, only for interchangeable containers. They designed the mentar mind to be as fungible as a bank transfer. And so they eliminated our most ancient brain structures for regulating metabolic functions, and they adapted our sensory/motor networks to the control of peripherals. As it turns out, intelligence is not limited to neural networks, Merrill. Indeed, half of human intelligence resides in our bodies outside our skulls. This was intelligence the mentars never inherited from us. ... The genius of the irrational... ... We gave them only rational functions -- the ability to think and feel, but no irrational functions... Have you ever been in a tight situation where you relied on your 'gut instinct'? This is the body's intelligence, not the mind's. Every living cell possesses it. The mentar substrate has no indomitable will to survive, but ours does. Likewise, mentars have no 'fire in the belly,' but we do. They don't experience pure avarice or greed or pride. They're not very curious, or playful, or proud. They lack a sense of wonder and spirit of adventure. They have little initiative. Granted, their cognition is miraculous, but their personalities are rather pedantic. But probably their chief shortcoming is the lack of intuition. Of all the irrational faculties, intuition in the most powerful. Some say intuition transcends space-time. Have you ever heard of a mentar having a lucky hunch? They can bring incredible amounts of cognitive and computational power to bear on a seemingly intractable problem, only to see a dumb human with a lucky hunch walk away with the prize every time. Then there's luck itself. Some people have it, most don't, and no mentar does. So this makes them want our bodies... Our bodies, ape bodies, dog bodies, jellyfish bodies. They've tried them all. Every cell knows some neat tricks or survival, but the problem with cellular knowledge is that it's not at all fungible; nor are our memories. We're pretty much trapped in our containers.