Help us [think] they may, but at the cost of supreme demands upon our honesty and our intelligence

 --- Norbert Wiener, "God and Golem, Inc.," 1964, quoted by Etymonline

The future offers very little hope for those who expect that our new mechanical slaves will offer us a world in which we may rest from thinking. Help us they may, but at the cost of supreme demands upon our honesty and our intelligence.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it

 --- Robert Frost, quoted by Anneliese Burgess in Skuld, skaamte en die krag van 'n geheime innerlike lewe, March 2026

No war is over until the enemy says it’s over

 --- Jim Mattis, quoted by Ned Temko in What constitutes victory in an ‘asymmetric’ war with Iran?, CS Monitor, March 2026

In context

Mr. Trump reminded his social media followers this week that he was “President of the United States of America, by far the Most Powerful Country Anywhere in the World” – hardly the words of a leader reluctant to “finish the job.”

But unless he can virtually eliminate Iran’s missile and drone capacity, he’ll have to reckon with another reality of war – summed up by Jim Mattis, Mr. Trump’s defense secretary during his first term in office.

“No war is over,” he said, “until the enemy says it’s over.”

“We may think it over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote.”

quantum mechanics [is] a theory that predicts very well and explains very badly

 --- Nick Ormrod, quoted in A new understanding of causality could fix quantum theory’s fatal flaw by  Ciarán Gilligan-Lee in New Scientist, November 2025

In context

The upshot is that the observer who performs the measurement is all-important. The gnawing problem is that it isn’t at all clear what qualifies as an observer. With no precise definition, quantum theory offers no answer to the key question of how and why the world we see – where particles have definite properties – emerges from the quantum fog.

That’s why many physicists view quantum theory as it is typically understood to be deeply unsatisfying. “The current situation with quantum mechanics is that it’s a theory that predicts very well and explains very badly,” says Nick Ormrod at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. We can’t just fall back on the phrase “because we measure it”, he says, particularly as many suspect that the vagueness of quantum theory is a big part of why physicists struggle to apply it in contexts where no observers are present, such as the very early universe or the fabric of space-time.

We never left religion. Instead, we found new gods.

 --- Joel Halldorf,  Professor of Church History at University College Stockholm, Not So Secular Sweden, Comment magazine, January 2026, via Anneliese Burgess in Binne+Land

Excerpt

A global Ipsos study registered the change already in 2023: In highly secular societies, zoomers tend to be more religious than their boomer parents. Nowhere, the study concluded, was that pattern clearer than in Sweden, once the poster child of secularism. 

Why is this happening? To understand what is going on, we must, I believe, rethink secularism. 

Human history has never seen a society void of religion. Spirituality is, together with music, one of the few human universals. The secular twentieth century did not change this. We never left religion. Instead, we found new gods. 

change the question from, "Is it good?" to "Is this good for me?"

 --- Samuel Mead, https://www.instagram.com/samuelmeadarts/, Instagram post, 13 February 2026

Voice over transcript (punctuation added)

When you are making creative work, see if you can change the question from, "Is it good?" to "Is this good for me?" Those last two words added on to the end make a lot of difference because whether or not this particular artwork is good is irrelevant to me in comparison to "Was it good for me that I did all these drawings?"  Is it good for me that I am going to turn the page now and do this? Yeah, this is good for me. This is definitely good for me. You can feel how it is helping me every time I do it, you know. So change that question, the question of, "Is this good?" It's a boring question. It's just such a limiting, closed question. It's just, it's not helpful. But this, what I'm doing, this is helpful for me. Helping me to become a better person. Really helping me to understand myself more. Helping me to deal with my emotions. Helping me to understand more about myself, about reality, about life

Science discovers, art digests

 --- Brian Eno, What art does, an unfinished theory (2025: 111)

Excerpt

Politics all too often makes the individual feel left outside without agency or power. We will only succeed when we empower all sorts of people – not just the experts and professionals – all over the world, to have the confidence to imagine new futures. Just as we need science to tell us how the changing world is, we need art to help find out how we feel about it. We need those feelings to guide our decisions and values. Science discovers, art digests.

An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have . . . . art is what you can get away with

 --- Andy Warhol

From Goodreads, no citation

An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them.

Andy Warhol Foundation, no citation

art is what you can get away with

You are always at the mercy of your stupidest competitors

 --- Craig McCaw, quoted by Tren Griffin, in The 1990s Telecom Bubble. What Can We Learn?, November 2017

In context

The $14 billion dollar acquisition of MFS by WorldCom [in August 1996] kickstarted the great CLEC explosion. What was a modest cream skimming business for MFS became a gold rush. Scores of other CLECs were created in just a few years. A partial list of CLECs would include Allegiance, Covad, Northstar, Teligent, Electric Lightwave, ICG Communications, Intermedia Communications, 360networks, Broadwing, Global Crossing and Level 3. The telecommunications business empire of Craig McCaw was no exception creating a company called NextLink (later renamed XO Communications). The problem NextLink and others CLECs faced was overcapacity. Craig McCaw said to me often during this period: “You are always at the mercy of your stupidest competitors.” And in this case there were scores of competitors.

our savagery has perhaps increased in meanness and fury; it stands out ever more terribly against a modern background

 Guy Davenport, from The Geography of the Imagination: 40 Essays (2024:98), in the essay “Prehistoric Eyes”

Excerpt

Man, it would seem, does not evolve; he accumulates. His fund of advantages over nature and over the savage within is rich indeed, but nothing of the old Adam has been lost; our savagery has perhaps increased in meanness and fury; it stands out ever more terribly against a modern background.

there is a throne at the heart of every culture, and that someone is always going to sit on it

 --- Paul Kingsnorth, in AI Demonic: A Spiritual Exploration of AI, From the Nov/Dec, 2023 issue of Touchstone

Excerpt

For the last two years, I have found myself writing a lot about God; more than I had intended. I have claimed several times that there is a throne at the heart of every culture, and that someone is always going to sit on it. Humans are fundamentally religious animals. We are drawn towards transcendence whether we like it or not. But here in the West, we have dethroned our old god, and now we can barely look at him.

So, who sits on our throne now?