Chalmers Quotes & Sayings

Christ came to give us a justifying righteousness, and He also came to make us holy - not chiefly for the purpose of evidencing here our possession of a justifying righteousness - but for the purpose of forming and fitting us for a blessed eternity. — Thomas Chalmers

I think the existence of zombies would contradict certain laws of nature in our world. It seems to be a law of nature, in our world, that when you get a brain of a certain character you get consciousness going along with it. — David Chalmers

The longing of my heart is to make known my glorious Redeemer to those who have never heard. — William Chalmers Burns

Such is the grasping tendency of the human heart, that it must have a something to lay hold of - and which, if wrested away without the substitution of another something in its place, would leave a void and a vacancy as painful to the mind, as hunger is to the natural system ... . The heart must have something to cling to ... — Thomas Chalmers

O Heavenly Father, convert my religion from a name to a principle! Bring all my thoughts and movements into an habitual reference to Thee! — Thomas Chalmers

In the wildest anarchy of man's insurgent appetites and sins there is still a reclaiming voice,
a voice which, even when in practice disregarded, it is impossible not to own; and to which, at the very moment that we refuse our obedience, we find that we cannot refuse the homage of what ourselves do feel and acknowledge to be the best, the highest principles of our nature. — Thomas Chalmers

The sum and substance of the preparation needed for a coming eternity is that you believe what the Bible tells you, and do what the Bible bids you. — Thomas Chalmers

One attempt to avoid the problem of induction involves weakening the demand that scientific knowledge be proven true, and resting content with the claim that scientific claims can be shown to be probably true in the light of the evidence. So the vast number of observations that can be invoked to support the claim that materials denser than air fall diWInwards on earth, although it does not permit us to prove the truth of the claim, does warrant the assertion that the claim is probably true. — Alan F. Chalmers

People have managed to avert their eyes and hope for the best. — David Chalmers

How does the water of the brain turn into the wine of consciousness? — David Chalmers

With the magnificence of eternity before us, let time, with all its fluctuations, dwindle into its own littleness. — Thomas Chalmers

I think that consciousness has always been the most important topic in the philosophy of mind, and one of the most important topics in cognitive science as a whole, but it had been surprisingly neglected in recent years. — David Chalmers

Here, the broader issues are already familiar, and discussion has focused at a more sophisticated and detailed level. Within the philosophy of mind, the problem of consciousness is no big news. — David Chalmers

Actually, I think my view is compatible with much of the work going on now in neuroscience and psychology, where people are studying the relationship of consciousness to neural and cognitive processes without really trying to reduce it to those processes. — David Chalmers

The human mind feels restless and dissatisfied under the anxieties of ignorance. It longs for the repose of conviction; and to gain this repose it will often rather precipitate its conclusions than wait for the tardy lights of observation and experiment. There is such a thing, too, as the love of simplicity and system,
a prejudice of the understanding which disposes it to include all the phenomena of nature under a few sweeping generalities,
an indolence which loves to repose on the beauties of a theory rather than encounter the fatiguing detail of its evidences. — Thomas Chalmers

Judging from the tendency and effect of his arguments, an atheist does not appear positively to refuse that a God may be ... His verdict on the doctrine of God is only that it is not proven. It is not that it is disproven. He is but an atheist. He is not an anti-theist. — Thomas Chalmers

Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens. — Chalmers Johnson

If it be the characteristic of a worldly man that he desecrates what is holy, it should be of the Christian to consecrate what is secular, and to recognize a present and presiding divinity in all things. — Thomas Chalmers

Things are still in early stages, but one can imagine that as we build up and systematize our theories of these associations, and try to boil them down to their core, the result might point us toward the sort of fundamental principles I advocate. — David Chalmers

When I'm out in public I need to be a role model for the kids. I need to be someone they can look up to or portray themselves as. — Mario Chalmers

Moral evil is its own curse. — Thomas Chalmers

It is not scholarship alone, but scholarship impregnated with religion, that tells on the great mass of society. We have no faith in the efficacy of mechanic's institutes, or even of primary and elementary schools, for building up a virtuous and well conditioned peasantry, so long as they stand dissevered from the lessons of Christian piety. — Thomas Chalmers

Even when I was studying mathematics, physics, and computer science, it always seemed that the problem of consciousness was about the most interesting problem out there for science to come to grips with. — David Chalmers

The character wherewith we sink into the grave at death is the very character wherewith we shall reappear at the resurrection. — Thomas Chalmers

Imperial politics represents the conquest of domestic politics and the latter's conversion into a crucial element of inverted totalitarianism. It makes no sense to ask how the democratic citizen could 'participate' substantively in imperial politics; hence it is not surprising that the subject of empire is taboo in electoral debates. No major politician or party has so much as publicly remarked on the existence of an American empire. — Chalmers Johnson

Sense data are much more controversial than qualia, because they are associated with a controversial theory of perception - that one perceives the world by perceiving one's sense-data, or something like that. — David Chalmers

I take one decisive and immediate step, and resign my all to the sufficiency of my Saviour. — Thomas Chalmers

Blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows. — Chalmers Johnson

The heart is not so constituted, and the only way to dispossess it of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one — Thomas Chalmers

A recent canvass of professional philosophers found the percentage of respondents who "accept or leans toward" various positions. On normative ethics, the results were deontology 25.9%; consequentialism 23.6%; virtue ethics 18.2%. On metaethics, results were moral realism 56.4%; moral anti-realism 27.7%. On moral judgment: cognitivism 65.7%; non-cognitivism 17.0% (Bourget and Chalmers 2009). — Nick Bostrom

It probably helps that my background is in the sciences and I can speak the scientists' language. — David Chalmers

Taking consciousness as a primitive rather than as an emergent property of the physical brain, Chalmers's search for a nonreductive ontology of consciousness led him to what he calls panprotopsychism. The proto reflects the possibility that the intrinsic properties of the basic entities of the physical world may be not quite mental, but that collectively they are able to constitute the mental (it is in this sense of proto that physics is "protochemical"). In this view, mind is much more fundamental to the universe than we ordinarily imagine. Panprotopsychism has the virtue of integrating mental events into the physical world. "We need psychophysical laws connecting physical processes to subjective experience," Chalmers says. "Certain aspects of quantum mechanics lend themselves very nicely to this. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

You can't control a superstar that has an ultimate green light. That's impossible. — Mario Chalmers

For me, growing up I watched Michael Jordan win all those championships, and I dreamed of being in that same spot one day. So to actually be here, and have one under my belt is an amazing feeling. — Mario Chalmers

Imagine a skilled botanist accompanied by someone like myself who is largely ignorant of botany taking part in a field trip into the Australian bush, with the objective of collecting observable facts about the native flora. It is undoubtedly the case that the botanist will be capable of collecting facts that are far more numerous and discerning than those I am able to observe and formulate, and the reason is clear. The botanist has a more elaborate conceptual scheme to exploit than myself, and that is because he or she knows more botany than I do. A knowledge of botany is a prerequisite for the formulation of the observation statements that might constitute its factual basis.
Thus, the recording of observable facts requires more than the reception of the stimuli, in the form of light rays, that impinge on the eye. It requires the knowledge of the appropriate conceptual scheme and how to apply it. — Alan F. Chalmers

The best way to overcome the world is not with morality or self-discipline. Christians overcome the world by seeing the beauty and excellence of Christ. They overcome the world by seeing something more attractive than the world: Christ — Thomas Chalmers

My phone beeped. I took it from my handbag and saw
a text message from Dixie.
It read: that man is sizzling HOT HOT HOT!!!!
truth! I texted back.
omg! his accent! his body! im in lurv
i noticed!
hes a bilf
wtf???
boss id like 2 fuk!
I snorted out loud with laughter.
Heller flicked his cold eyes to me.
I wrote: norty girl!
ooh! does he like norty asian girls?
Another involuntary snort from me.
"Ms Chalmers," he warned.
gotta go. my new daddys strict, I texted.
spankz for u 2nite!
lolz! only if im lucky! c u soon xx
- heller 1 — J.D. Nixon

You're the only one I trust, because you don't trust anyone. A fine and practical trait in a young man! — Dean Chalmers

A good scientific law or theory is falsifiable just because it makes definite claims about the world. For the falsificationist, If follows fairly readily from this that the more falsifiable a theory is the better, in some loose sense of more. The more a theory claims, the more potential opportunities there will be for showing that the world does not in fact behave in the way laid down by the theory. A very good theory will be one that makes very wide-ranging claims about the world, and which is consequently highly falsifiable, and is one that resists falsification whenever it is put to the test. — Alan F. Chalmers

Enthusiasm is a virtue rarely to be met with in seasons of calm and unruffled prosperity. — Thomas Chalmers

Infidelity is one of those coinages,-a mass of base money that won't pass current with any heart that loves truly, or any head that thinks correctly. And infidels are poor sad creatures; they carry about them a load of dejection and desolation, not the less heavy that it is invisible. It is the fearful blindness of the soul. — Thomas Chalmers

When war becomes the most profitable course of action, we can certainly expect more of it. — Chalmers Johnson

Anyway, there is a lot of really interesting work going on in the neuroscience and psychology of consciousness, and I would love to see philosophers become more closely involved with this. — David Chalmers

Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does. — David Chalmers

Because the idea of zombies seems to make sense, and seems to, in a certain sense, be possible, I think one can use that to argue against the thesis that everything is purely physical. Now many people, I think, agree that the idea of zombies are conceivable, including people who want to be physicalists. — David Chalmers

When the Lord entered my world, I experienced that gospel-ignited "expulsive power of a new affection" (to quote the title of Thomas Chalmers's famous sermon). That new affection was not heterosexuality, but Jesus, my Jesus, my friend and Savior. I was not converted out of homosexuality. I was converted out of unbelief. — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

Within psychology and neuroscience, some new and rigorous experimental paradigms for studying consciousness have helped it begin to overcome the stigma that has been attached to the topic for most of this century. — David Chalmers

Although most Americans may be largely ignorant of what was, and still is, being done in their names, all are likely to pay a steep price-individua lly and collectively-fo r their nation's continued efforts to dominate the global scene. — Chalmers Johnson

Actually, I think most people accept the existence of qualia. — David Chalmers

Although I'm Australian, I find myself much more in sympathy with the Austrian version! — David Chalmers

Acts of virtue ripen into habits; and the goodly and permanent result is the formation or establishment of a virtuous character. — Thomas Chalmers

Listen: Common sense doesn't mean what it used to mean.
-Matthias Chalmers, STAIRWAY2 HEAVEN — Chaz Thompson

There's certainly nothing original about the observation that conscious experience poses a hard problem. — David Chalmers

He died angry," Chalmers said, "because I didn't believe him. Even in death he is emphatic and imperious. — Erik Larson

History teaches us that the capacity of things to get worse is limitless. Roman history suggests that the short, happy life of the American republic may be coming to its end ... the US will probably maintain a facade of constitutional government and drift along until financial bankruptcy overtakes it. — Chalmers Johnson

Jack Nightingale: "So I'm a hero?"
Supt. Chalmers: "No, Nightingale, you're an arsehole. But I can't arrest you for that. — Stephen Leather

The point is that if the knowledge that provides the categories we use to describe our observations is defective, the observation statements that presuppose those categories are similarly defective. — Alan F. Chalmers

There are three reasons for breast-feeding: the milk is always at the right temperature; it comes in attractive containers; and the cat can't get it. — Irena Chalmers

The demise of the American empire will be no more regretted than the demise of the Soviet empire. — Chalmers Johnson

I feel my disease, and I feel that my want of alarm and lively affecting conviction forms its most obstinate ingredient; I try to stir up the emotion, and feel myself harassed and distressed at the impotency of my own meditations. But why linger without the threshold in the face of a warm and urgent invitation? "Come unto me." Do not think it is your office to heal one part of the disease, and Christ's to heal the remainder. — Thomas Chalmers

The brute animals have all the same sensations of pain as human beings, and consequently endure as much pain when their body is hurt; but in their case the cruelty of torment is greater, because they have no mind to bear them up against their sufferings, and no hope to look forward to when enduring the last extreme pain. — Thomas Chalmers

Dropping the news to my parents that I was skipping my 'dream education' at Chalmers to sit at home recording videos while playing video games was not easy. — PewDiePie

Eggs are very much like small boys. If you overheat them or over beat them, they will turn on you and no amount of future love will right the wrong. — Irena Chalmers

Thousands of men breathe, move, and live; pass off the stage of life and are heard of no more. Why? They did not a particle of good in the world; and none were blest by them, none could point to them as the instrument of their redemption; not a line they wrote, not a word they spoke, could be recalled, and so they perished
their light went out in darkness, and they were not remembered more than the insects of yesterday. Will you thus live and die, O man immortal? Live for something. — Thomas Chalmers

Every man is a missionary, now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends or designs it or not. — Thomas Chalmers

Everyone knows Jordan as a winner, and that's what I want to be known as at the end of my playing career. Someone who's won multiple NBA Championships and has made a difference in the NBA. — Mario Chalmers

The Bible is like a wide and beautiful landscape seen afar off, dim and confused; but a good telescope will bring it near, and spread out all its rocks and trees and flowers and vulant fields and winding rivers at one's very feet. That telescope is the Spirit's teaching. — Thomas Chalmers

Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain. — David Chalmers

In the last analysis, a pickle is a cucumber with experience. — Irena Chalmers

None of the people's wars of the sixties did very well, including the one in Vietnam. Vo Nguyen Giap himself has admitted a loss of 600,000 men between 1965 and 1968 ... Moreover, by about 1970 at least 80% of the day-to-day combat in South Vietnam was being carried on by regular NVA troops ... Genuine black-pajama southern guerrillas had been decimated and amounted to no more than 20% of the communist fighting forces. — Chalmers Johnson

I want to feel my own nothingness, I want to give myself up in absolute resignation to God, to lie prostrate and passive at His feet, with no other disposition in my heart than that of merging my will into His will, and no other language in my mouth than that of prayer for the perfecting of His strength in my weakness. — Thomas Chalmers

What does it mean, exactly, for a given system to be a 'neural correlate of consciousness'? — David Chalmers

Shakespeare is an intellectual miracle. — Thomas Chalmers

Even this abbreviated rundown of mind-brain philosophies would not be complete without what the Australian philosopher David Chalmers calls "don't-have-clue materialism." This is the default position of those who have no idea about the origins of consciousness or the mind but assert that "it must be physical, as materialism must be true," as Chalmers puts it. "Such a view is held widely, but rarely in print." One might add that many working scientists hold this view without really reflecting on the implications of it. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

The 'defense' budget is three quarters of a trillion dollars. Profits went up last year well over 25%. I guarantee you: when war becomes that profitable, we're going to see more of it. — Chalmers Johnson

Generalisations should be ignored — Robert Chalmers

In this uncertain world, the food is disposable. It is the wrappings that are permanent. — Irena Chalmers

Even in the fiercest uproar of our stormy passions, conscience, though in her softest whispers, gives to the supremacy of rectitude the voice of an undying testimony. — Thomas Chalmers

It is in those times of hopeless chaos when the sovereign hand of God is most likely to be seen. — Thomas Chalmers

The public! why, the public's nothing better than a great baby. — Thomas Chalmers

Chalmers, thanks to Baudelaire, knew all about Taffreuse Juive, opium, absinthe, negresses, Lesbos and the metamorphoses of the vampire ... Needless to say, Chalmers and myself were both virgins, in every possible meaning of the word. — Christopher Isherwood

There are no moral blanks; there are no neutral characters. — Thomas Chalmers

I had the idea that it would be wonderful to be a physicist or a mathematician maybe 500 years ago around the time of Newton when there were really fundamental things just lying around to be discovered. — David Chalmers

Regardless of how large, your vision is too small. — Thomas Chalmers

I have no sympathy whatever with those who would grudge our workmen and our common people the very highest acquisitions which their taste or their time or their inclination would lead them to realize. — Thomas Chalmers

A man's needs are few. The simpler the life, therefore, the better. Indeed, only three things are truly necessary in order to make life happy: the blessing of God, the benefit of books, and the benevolence of friends. — Thomas Chalmers

Guard against that vanity which courts a compliment, or is fed by it. — Thomas Chalmers

As a form of government, imperialism does not seek or require the consent of the governed. It is a pure form of tyranny. The American attempt to combine domestic democracy with such tyrannical control over foreigners is hopelessly contradictory and hypocritical. A country can be democratic or it can be imperialistic, but it cannot be both. — Chalmers Johnson

Whitefield was the very first who seems thoroughly to have understood what Chalmers has called the aggressive system. He did not wait for souls to come to him, but he went after souls. He did not sit tamely by his fireside, mourning over the wickedness of the land. He went forth to beard the Devil in his high places. He attacked sin and wickedness face to face, and gave them no peace. He dived into holes and corners after sinners. He hunted up ignorance and vice, wherever it could be found. He showed that he thoroughly realized the nature of the ministerial office. Like a fisherman, he did not wait for the fish to come to him. Like a fisherman, he used every kind of means to catch souls. — J.C. Ryle

A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can't be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, like the old Roman Republic, it will lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship. — Chalmers Johnson

I never expected this to catch on in the way it did! Of course similar observations have been made by any number of people, and the distinction is obvious to anyone who thinks about the subject a little. — David Chalmers

Life is a contradiction. Minimalism and in its simplicity opens the door to complicated analysis not just to dust free spaces. — Rohan Chalmers

Puritan Thomas Watson said, "Until sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet." I think Scottish minister Thomas Chalmers, who preached on "the expulsive power of a new affection," would have added: Until Christ be sweet, sin will not be bitter. — Gloria Furman

Chalmers, like many of the English writers whom he then most admired, felt a strong natural sympathy with everything French. At Rouen he imagined himself as having escaped into a world in which it was possible to speak openly and unaffectedly of all those subjects which in England must be introduced by an apology or guarded with a sneer - poetry, metaphysics, romantic love. — Christopher Isherwood

The sound of the blues, rhythm and blues, country music, is what we lived for, black and white alike. It gave you strength to sit on one of those throbbing Allis-Chalmers tractors all day if you knew you were gonna hear something on the radio or maybe see a show that evening. — Levon Helm

Infidelity gives nothing in return for what it takes away. What, then, is it worth? Everything valuable as a compensating power. Not a blade of grass that withers, or the ugliest weed that is flung away to rot and die, but reproduces something. — Thomas Chalmers

Studying consciousness tells us more about how the world is fundamentally strange. I think we have a few revolutions to go yet before we get to the bottom of it. — David Chalmers

Write your name in kindness, love and mercy on the hearts of the thousands you come in contact with year by year, and you will never be forgotten. — Thomas Chalmers

The term blowback, which officials of the Central Intelligent Agency first invented for their own internal use, ... refers to the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. What the daily press reports as the malign act of terrorists or drug lords or rogue states or illegal arms merchants often turn out to be blowback from earlier American operations. — Chalmers Johnson

My interests started about in science and in mathematics; I always thought I was going to be a mathematician. — David Chalmers