Laszlo Quotes & Sayings

The experience of space is not a privilege of the gifted few, but a biological function. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

[Confiscating a book and punishing its author] is a sign that one does not have a good case, or at least doesn't trust it enough to defend it with reasons and refute the objections. Some people even go so far as to consider prohibited or confiscated books to be the best ones of all, for the prohibition indicates that their authors wrote what they really thought rather than what they were supposed to think ... — Laszlo Radvanyi

If I have to shoot on digital, I will not make the film. — Laszlo Nemes

But let us imagine RIGHT NOW that we find out about a world where there are artists who paint without brushes, make music without instruments, and write without pen and paper. The very thought makes me happy. That this world could be ours, right here and now. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

I love the Dutch impressionists - Vermeer, Rembrandt. What they were able to do with light was astonishing. As for photographers, I think mostly of the Hungarians: Robert Capa, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Jozsef Pesci. In fact, I have one of his photographs hanging in my house. — Vilmos Zsigmond

Look, Laszlo. I'll have the dentist with me, and I don't want to alarm her any more than necessary. So take Vanna out of the backseat and stick her in the trunk."
Shanna halted. Her mouth dropped open. Her throat seized up, making it hard to breathe.
I don't care how much crap you have in the trunk. We're not driving around with a naked body in the car."
Oh no! She gasped for air. He was a hit man. — Kerrelyn Sparks

We're losing film, especially in projection, we're losing a great achievement of civilization. A still image and darkness make up 50% of the experience. The still images become movement in your head. That's the magic of cinema. — Laszlo Nemes

The photograph, now they are detached from their original surroundings, they are involved in a close world in which they only relate to each other: all the rest of 'reality' has vanished. This allows us to see those elements from a new point of view and perhaps to reach a better understanding ... — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

The photographer is a manipulator of light; photography is a manipulation of light. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

There is no bigger sin than men cruelly abusing their power to keep their own nation in servitude, he said, and he did not need to explain who the sinners were. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

We are beginning to see the entire universe as a holographically interlinked network of energy and information, organically whole and self referential at all scales of its existence. We, and all things in the universe, are non-locally connected with each other and with all other things in ways that are unfettered by the hitherto known limitations of space and time. — Ervin Laszlo

Forget dice rolling or boxes of chocolates as metaphors for life. Think of yourself as a dreaming robot on autopilot, and you'll be much closer to the truth. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

The diversity of networks in business and the economy is mindboggling. There are policy networks, ownership networks, collaboration networks, organizational networks, network marketing-you name it. It would be impossible to integrate these diverse interactions into a single all-encompassing web. Yet no matter what organizational level we look at, the same robust and universal laws that govern nature's webs seem to greet us. The challenge is for economic and network research alike to put these laws into practice. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

There is an intense relationship between proximate objects, a much weaker one between objects further away, and as for the really distant ones there is none at all, and that is the nature of God. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

One of the applications of Big Data is giving people the facts, and getting them to understand that their own decision-making is not perfect. And that in itself causes them to change their behavior — Laszlo Bock

Nature normally hates power laws. In ordinary systems all quantities follow bell curves, and correlations decay rapidly, obeying exponential laws. But all that changes if the system is forced to undergo a phase transition. Then power laws emerge-nature's unmistakable sign that chaos is departing in favor of order. The theory of phase transitions told us loud and clear that the road from disorder to order is maintained by the powerful forces of self-organization and is paved by power laws. It told us that power laws are not just another way of characterizing a system's behavior. They are the patent signatures of self-organization in complex systems. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

If we were to construct a similar map for society, it would have to include each person's professional and personal interests and chart everyone she or he knew. It would make Milgram's experiment seem clumsy and obsolete by allowing us to find, in seconds, the shortest path to any person in the world. It would be a must-use tool for everyone from politicians to salespeople and epidemiologists. Of course, such a social search engine is impossible to build, since it would take at least a lifetime to interrogate all 6 billion people on the earth to learn about their friends and acquaintances. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Air France's in-flight magazine. — Ervin Laszlo

The difference between human dynamics and data mining boils down to this: Data mining predicts our behaviors based on records of our patterns of activity; we don't even have to understand the origins of the patterns exploited by the algorithm. Students of human dynamics, on the other hand, seek to develop models and theories to explain why, when, and where we do the things we do with some regularity. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Design ... is the integration of technological, social, and economical requirements, biological necessities, and the psychological effects of materials, shape, color, volume and space. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Back in the past metaphysical realisation needed only the will of realisation. Later realisation also needed initiation. Even later initiation already presupposed preparation. Today even preparation has to be prepared, but first of all a self-correction should take place. — Andras Laszlo

I no longer care if I die, said Korin, then, after a long silence, pointed to the nearby flooded quarry: Are those swans? — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

Quietly, continually, the rain fell and the inconsolable wind that died then was forever resurrected ruffled the still surfaces of puddles so lightly it failed to disturb the delicate dead skin that had covered them during the night so that instead of recovering the previous day's tired glitter they increasingly and remorselessly absorbed the light that swam slowly out of the east. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

Time is our most valuable nonrenewable resource, and if we want to treat it with respect, we need to set priorities. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

It cannot be too plainly stated that it is quite unimportant whether photography produces 'art' or not. Its own basic laws, not the opinions of art critics, will provide the only valid measure of its future worth. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

We want to understand what works here rather than what worked at any other organization. — Laszlo Bock

We consider the Holocaust as being a sort of strange event taking place on another planet; we never understood in a visceral way that this is something that took place in the heart of man. That's something that you can feel, the genocidal tendency is within human nature. It seems that if we forget about this, our future is also compromised. — Laszlo Nemes

There is a constant and intimate contact among the things that coexist and co-evolve in the universe - a sharing of bonds and messages that makes reality into a stupendous network of interaction and communication. — Ervin Laszlo

This unique and deep meaning of power laws perhaps explains our excitement when we first spotted them on the Web. It wasn't only that they were unprecedented and unexpected in the context of networks. It was that they lifted complex networks out of the jungle of randomness where Erdos and Renyi had placed them forty years earlier and dropped them into the center of the colorful and conceptually rich arena of self-organization. Gazing at the power laws that our little search engine carried home from its journey, we caught a glimpse of a new and unsuspected order within networks, one that displayed an uncommon beauty and coherence. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

I'm not interested to believe in something, but to understand the people who believe. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

Europeans believe that culture is something they can grasp and touch because, for them, culture is comprised of objects, or remnants of objects, and this object, this remnant, conceals within it the essence of the original. For the Chinese, the matter is completely different---for them, the essence of culture can only be preserved in spiritual form. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

There is an old debate," Erdos liked to say, "about whether you create mathematics or just discover it. In other words, are the truths already there, even if we don't yet know them?" Erdos had a clear answer to this question: Mathematical truths are there among the list of absolute truths, and we just rediscover them. Random graph theory, so elegant and simple, seemed to him to belong to the eternal truths. Yet today we know that random networks played little role in assembling our universe. Instead, nature resorted to a few fundamental laws, which will be revealed in the coming chapters. Erdos himself created mathematical truths and an alternative view of our world by developing random graph theory. Not privy to nature's laws in creating the brain and society, Erdos hazarded his best guess in assuming that God enjoys playing dice. His friend Albert Einstein, at Princeton, was convinced of the opposite: "God does not play dice with the universe. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

The photogram, image formation outside the camera is the real key to photography,it embodies the essence ... that allows us to capture light on light sensitive material without the use of any camera. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Sometimes all we need is only listening to an inner voice and remaining human in a very personal way. But even if it is a personal way, it's still a very valid way - maybe the most valid way. It doesn't have to be a collective experience or someone telling you what to do. The most sacred human experience can be a very personal one. — Laszlo Nemes

It is not always necessary to search for the cause behind everything, because every cause is unfounded. A cause only looks like a cause from a certain viewpoint. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

Culture, then, only truly becomes culture when it is embodied in someone. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules of 'how to do'. The salvation of photography comes from the experiment. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Every period has its own optical focus. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Bough of a tree to the rain ... he turns the phrase over in his mouth as if it were fine wine, trying to guess its vintage, realizing somewhat indifferently that it is beyond him. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

However apparently insignificant the event, whether it be the ring of tobacco ash surrounding the table, the direction from which the wild geese first appeared, or a series of seemingly meaningless human movements, he couldn't afford to take his eyes off it and must note it all down, since only by doing so could he hope not to vanish one day and fall a silent captive to the infernal arrangement whereby the world decomposes but is at the same time constantly in the process of self-construction. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

If your goals are ambitious and crazy enough, even failure will be a pretty good achievement. — Laszlo Bock

We have reached the end of one era, and now we don't know what is all around us. Because we're already in a new era, and it is very different from the old one. Science and the world of technology are both changing everything so quickly, even our bodies. So the original ancient culture was present here, but to no avail, at this point in history it has come to stop. It still has some effect, some kind of continuity, but it cannot analyse and reformulate things, it cannot impact things with absolute strength. The age to follow will be full of dangers. It will be full of difficulties. In all likelihood, it will not be a good future for mankind. It is even possible this new era will mean the end of mankind. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

When I began research, I read the writings of the Sonderkommandos. They are not well known, but these prisoners wrote from the middle of hell from Auschwitz, to let the world know what happened. The texts were buried beneath the ground and found after the liberation of the concentration camps. — Laszlo Nemes

If there's no magic of cinema, you only have the plain imagery of television. We are moving more and more towards a world devoid of meaningful experiences. We're going to the surface. — Laszlo Nemes

In a completely different era and domain, Charles Darwin hypothesized that the emergence of each new species was a gradual process, taking place through the slow transformation of existing species into their somewhat-modified offspring. Yet evidence for such continuous change was not only lacking back then but is scarce even today, having prompted Darwin to label it "the gravest objection [that] can be urged against my theory." Instead, over millions of years species in the fossil record show little or no evolutionary change. New species tend to appear over periods spanning tens of thousands of years, a split second in terms of all evolutionary time. Evolution proceeds in bursts, which are in turn preserved in the fossil record. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Get it into your thick head that jokes are just like life. Things that begin badly, end badly. Everything's fine in the middle, it's the end you need to worry about. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

The invention of photography destroyed the canons of representational, imitative art. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

As long as ratings are directly linked to pay and career opportunities, every employee has this incentive to exploit the system. — Laszlo Bock

A subtle urge to synchronize is pervasive in nature. Indeed, it drives the firing of thousands of pacemaker cells in the heart and brings into synchrony the menstrual cycles of women who live together for long periods of time. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Euler's proof that in Konigsberg there is no path crossing all seven bridges only once was based on a simple observation. Nodes with an odd number of links must be either the starting or the end point of the journey. A continuous path that goes through all the bridges can have only one starting and one end point. Thus, such a path cannot exist on a graph that has more than two nodes with an odd number of links. As the Konigsberg graph had four such nodes, one could not find the desired path. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

We have progressed in a technological sense, but I'm not so sure whether we have progressed in a civilizational matter - the quality of the civilization has not improved. It's a civilization that's in love with technology but forgetting about the human side of it and the destructive tendency in human civilization has not been faced. — Laszlo Nemes

Mark Twain once said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Catastrophe! Of course! Last judgement! Horseshit! It's you that are the catastrophe, you're the bloody last judgement, your feet don't even touch the ground, you bunch of sleepwalkers. I wish you were dead, the lot of you. Let's make a bet,' and here he shook Nadaban by the shoulders, 'that you don't even know what I'm talking about!! Because you don't talk, you "whisper" or "expostulate"; you don't walk down the street but "proceed feverishly"; you don't enter a place but "cross its threshold", you don't feel cold or hot, but "find yourselves shivering" or "feeling the sweat pour down you"! I haven't heard a straight word for hours, you can only mew and caterwaul; because if a hooligan throws a brick through your window you invoke the last judgement, because your brains are addled and filled up with steam, because if someone sticks your nose in shit all you do is sniff, stare and cry "sorcery! — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

Networks do not offer a miracle drug, a strategy that makes you invincible in any business environment. The truly important role networks play is in helping existing organizations adapt to rapidly changing market conditions. The very concept of network implies a multidimensional approach. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

In May 2010, a Florida programmer by the name of Laszlo Hanyecz wanted to test the technology. He offered to buy a pizza for 10,000 coins. The pizza arrived. For several days after that, Hanyecz bought 10,000-bitcoin pizzas. I bet he regrets it now. Ten thousand bitcoins would at one stage be worth over 12 million dollars. Twelve million bucks for a pizza! — Dominic Frisby

Roman pressed the handkerchief against the gaping hole where his right fang should be. "Thit."
"You could use your own healing powers to seal the vein shut," Laszlo suggested.
"It would be clothed permanently. I'd be a one-thided eater for all eternity." Roman removed the bloody handkerchief from his mouth and reinserted his fang into the whole.
...
"Sir, I suggest you go to a dentist." Laszlo picked up the fang and offered it to Roman. "I've heard they can put a lost tooth back."
"Oh, right." Gregori snorted. "What's he supposed to do, waltz into a dental office and say, 'Excuse me, I'm a vampire and I lost a fang in the neck of a sex toy.' They're not going to be line up to help him. — Kerrelyn Sparks

I came to feel that, in addition to Imre Kertesz, Hungary has produced at least three contemporary novelists who deserve the Nobel: Peter Nadas, Peter Esterhazy and Laszlo Krasznahorkai. — Garth Risk Hallberg

Today we know more about Jupiter than the guy who lives next door to us. We can predict where an election will go, we can turn a gene on or off, and we can even send a robot to Mars, but we are lost if asked to explain or predict the phenomena we might expect to know the most about, the actions of our fellow humans. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

We are forced to choose, for the processes we have initiated in our lifetime cannot continue in the lifetime of our children. Whatever we do either creates the framework for continuing the supreme adventure of life and consciousness on this planet or sets the stage for its termination. The choice before us is urgent and important: it can neither be postponed nor ignored. — Ervin Laszlo

My talent lies in the expression of my life and creative power through light, colour and form. As a painter I can convey the essence of life. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

We've found that trusting people to do the right thing generally results in them doing the right thing. Allowing people to reward one another facilitates a culture of recognition and service, and is a way to show employees that they should be thinking like owners rather than serfs. — Laszlo Bock

I believe in the directorial point of view and directorial choices. — Laszlo Nemes

The reality of our century is technology: the invention, construction and maintenance of machines. To be a user of machines is to be of the spirit of this century. Machines have replaced the transcendental spiritualism of past eras. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

The focus on process rather than purpose creates an insidious opportunity for sly employees to manipulate the system. — Laszlo Bock

Once I read a story about a butterfly in the subway, and today, I saw one. It got on at 42nd, and off at 59th, where, I assume it was going to Bloomingdales to buy a hat that will turn out to be a mistake - as almost all hats are. — Miklos Laszlo

Only the land remained, the silent order of the mountains, the ground covered in fallen dead leaves in the enormous space, a boundless expanse - disguising, concealing, hiding, covering all that lies below the burning earth. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

The light gave him hope but he was afraid of it too. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

Design is the organization of materials and processes in the most productive way, in a harmonious balance of all elements necessary for a certain function. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

A string of recent breath-taking discoveries has forces us to acknowledge that amazingly simple and far-reaching natural laws govern the structure and evolution of all the complex networks that surround us. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

The noise of the rain seemed to have grown a little fainter but then it pelted down again. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

Today bursty search patterns explain an amazingly wide range of behavioral phenomena, from how people recall facts stored in their memory to how they locate information on the World Wide Web. In publication after publication, scientists have offered evidence that the most effective strategy for locating a given target is not the one that is the most obvious, systematic, and regular but a search strategy that is bursty, intermittent, and even haphazard. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

The magic possibility of framing a certain space and time is what brought me to photography. This process of recording elements of 3 dimensions in the flow of time, and fixing them in a 2 dimensional image, creates a new context for the elements of the photograph ... — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

What do you want me to do?" Ned asked with some apprehension.
The bearded man smiled, and the video shifted to another recording. The man looked serious now, leaning into the camera, and he said:
"You must take control of this ship. — Bryan M. Laszlo

Designing is not a profession but an attitude. Design has many connotations. It is the organization of materials and processes in the most productive way, in a harmonious balance of all elements necessary for a certain function. It is the intergration of technological, social, and economical requirements, biological necessities, and the psychological effects of materials, shape, color, volume and space. Thinking in relationships. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

What one ought to capture in beauty is that which is treacherous and irresistible ... — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

You have every cause for anxiety. we are on the threshold of a more searching, more honest, more open society. there are new times just around the corner — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

In retrospect, Euler's unintended message is very simple: Graphs or networks have properties, hidden in their construction, that limit or enhance our ability to do things with them. For more than two centuries the layout of Konigsberg's graph limited its citizens' ability to solve their coffeehouse problem. But a change in the layout, the addition of only one extra link, suddenly removed this constraint. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

She's easy to use." Laszlo pointed at the doll's neck. "You remove the clamp, insert the small funnel, select two quarts of your favorite blood from Romatech Industries, and fill her up."
I see. Does she light up when she's running low?"
Laszlo frowned. "I suppose I could put in an indicator light- — Kerrelyn Sparks

Photography, when used as a representational art, is not a mere copy of nature. This is proved by the rarity of the 'good' photograph. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Death, he felt, was only a kind of warning rather than a desperate and permanent end. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

Coming into tonight, I knew it was going to be a great race, ... In the 400, Laszlo put up a 4:10.1 earlier in the year, and so you expect him to put up a good time in (the 200). I knew Ryan was going to be fast coming off his short course season, and he's improved a lot since Athens, so I just wanted to go out there and relax a bit and go out there and do what I had to do. — Michael Phelps

I don't think you'll ever replace human judgment and human inspiration and creativity because, at the end of the day, you need to be asking questions like, O.K., the system says this. Is this really what we want to do? Is that the right thing? — Laszlo Bock

I don't want to hurt anyone" Laszlo fiddled with a button on his tux jacket. "Can't we convince the CIA that some of us are peaceful?"
"we'll have to try" Angus folded his arms across his broad chest. "And if they doona believe we're peaceful, then we'll have to kill the bastards."
Roman frowned, somehow their Highlander logic escaped him. — Kerrelyn Sparks

When I am not reading Kafka I am thinking about Kafka. When I am not thinking about Kafka I miss thinking about him. Having missed thinking about him for a while, I take him out and read him again. That's how it works. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

There's digital fatigue. When you can do everything, you can actually do nothing. — Laszlo Nemes

G.P.A.'s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. We found that they don't predict anything. — Laszlo Bock

Keep in mind that imagination is at the heart of all innovation. Crush or constrain it and the fun will vanish. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

It passes, but it does not pass away. — Laszlo Krasznahorkai

A dwelling should be not a retreat from space, but life in space. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

We owe the low price of electricity today to the power grid, the network that emerged
through these pairwise connections, linking all producers and consumers
into a single network. It allows cheaply produced power to be instantly
transported anywhere. Electricity hence offers a wonderful example of the
huge positive impact networks have on our life — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

80 percent of profits are produced by only 20 percent of the employees, 80 percent of customer service problems are created by only 20 percent of consumers, 80 percent of decisions are made during 20 percent of meeting time, and so on. It — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

What we care about is, when faced with a problem and you're a member of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. And just as critically, do you step back and stop leading, do you let someone else? — Laszlo Bock

Part of the challenge with leadership is that it's very driven by gut instinct in most cases - and even worse, everyone thinks they're really good at it. The reality is that very few people are. — Laszlo Bock

The photogram, or camera-less record of forms produced by light, which embodies the unique nature of the photographic process, is the real key to photography. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

The real legacy of the Internet is not the birth of thousands of new online companies but the transformation of existing businesses. We can see its signature on everything from mom-and-pop stores to large multinational agglomerates. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Open the "book of life" and you will see a "text" of about 3 billion letters, filling about 10,000 copies of the new York Times Sunday edition. Each line looks something like this:
TCTAGAAACA ATTGCCATTG TTTCTTCTCA TTTTCTTTTC ACGGGCAGCC
These letters, abbreviations of the molecules making up the DNA, could easily mean that the anonymous donor whose genome has been sequenced will be bald by the age of fifty. Or they could reveal that he will develop Alzheimer's disease by seventy. We are repeatedly told that everything from our personality to future medical history is encoded in this book. Can you read it? I doubt it. Let me share a secret with you: Neither can biologists or doctors. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

In photography we possess an extraordinary instrument for reproduction. But photography is much more than that. Today it is [a method for bringing optically] some thing entirely new into the world. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

It's feeling the sense of responsibility, the sense of ownership, to step in, to try to solve any problem - and the humility to step back and embrace the better ideas of others. Your end goal, is what can we do together to problem-solve. I've contributed my piece, and then I step back. — Laszlo Bock

It's a movie depiction you don't want to screw up. — Laszlo Nemes