Falsificationist Quotes & Sayings

JANE: What to do when it is that time in your girl child's life:

1. Sit down calmly and explain sex to her?

2. Buy her a book, video, or CD that gives her the details?

3. Buy her condoms and put her on the pill?

Or do as many mothers before you did - just stick your head in the sand and hope she joins a convent.

Of course these days your child may know more about sex than you did at her age, what with in-school health lessons, and out-of-school R-rated movies easily accessed on the TV, not to mention the Starr Report!

In the days of fairy tales, sex was dangerous because so many women died in childbirth. Today sex is again dangerous because of diseases like AIDS. So what do we say? — Jane Yolen

David Eagleman describes how you can take a male stickleback fish and have a female fish trespass on its territory. The male gets confused, because it wants to mate with the female, but it also wants to defend its territory. As a result, the male stickleback fish will simultaneously attack the female while initiating courtship behavior. The male is driven into a frenzy, trying to woo and kill the female at the same time. This works for mice as well. Put an electrode in front of a piece of cheese. If the mouse gets too close, the electrode will shock it. One feedback loop tells the mouse to eat the cheese, but another one tells the mouse to stay away and avoid being shocked. By adjusting the location of the electrode, you can get the mouse to oscillate, torn between two conflicting feedback loops. — Michio Kaku

In any society that is governed by the rule of law, some form of morality is always imposed. It's inescapable. — Kirk Cameron

Our minds have a tendency to wander. To duck and feint and keep us at a slight remove from the moment at hand. — Dani Shapiro

One of the good things about the profession of being a professor, is that you also have time to do what interests you and what you care about or what you're good at. — Louis Menand

I do read a lot, and I think in recent years the ratio between the amount of non-fiction and fiction has tipped quite considerably. I did read fiction as a teenager as well, mostly because I was forced to read fiction, of course, to go through high school. — Daniel Tammet

Good manners are very important, particularly in the morning. — Louise Fitzhugh

She was a stubborn English lass, but he was a clever Scot. — Victoria Roberts

Development can indeed continue beyond childhood and youth, beyond the seventies. It can continue until the very end of life, given purposes that challenge and use our human abilities ... In sum, our development does not necessarily end at any age. We can continue to develop into our eighties, even to our nineties. — Betty Friedan

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

Our motto is Audeo. I dare. Dare to take the life you want in your own two hands and do not let it go, do you hear me? — Deanna Raybourn

Judy, I read that you said your first memory was music. Music that fills up a home. And one day, suddenly the music could escape through a window. For the rest of your life, you had to chase it. — Ava Dellaira

I'm like a boomerang, I always come back. — Agyness Deyn

Jim finished his beer and wondered how in the hell he'd found himself in the role of Cupid. Man, if those four lads even thought about getting him to wear the wings and a diaper while he nocked his arrow, he was so renegotiating his employee contract. And not with words. — J.R. Ward

I'm a lifelong Simpsons fanatic and I wanted to create my own animated show, one day. — Jonah Hill