Great Throughts Treasury

"We believe that the most basic of all changes in human social organization have been the result of three processes. Starting 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, agriculture was invented in the Middle East – probably by a woman. That’s the First Wave. Roughly 250 years ago, the Industrial Revolution triggered a Second Wave of change. Brute-force technologies amplified human and animal muscle power and gave rise to an urban, factory-centered way of life. Sometime after World War II, a gigantic Third Wave began transforming the planet, based on tools that amplify mind rather than muscle. The Third Wave is bigger, deeper and faster than the other two. This is the civilization of the computer, the satellite and Internet." - Alvin Toffler

"We cannot wait for governments to do it all. Globalization operates on Internet time. Governments tend to be slow moving by nature, because they have to build political support for every step." - Kofi Annan, fully Kofi Atta Annan

"The open-source collaborative development model, I believe, is built to succeed in the Internet age, and it makes more sense than the proprietary model of some of our competitors." - Michael Dell, fully Michael Saul Dell

"The Internet is probably the most significant thing that has come along." - Michael Dell, fully Michael Saul Dell

"Sooner or later the Internet will become profitable. It's an old story played before by canals, railroads and automobiles. " - Paul Samuelson, fully Paul Anthony Samuelson

"The new information technology... Internet and e-mail... have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications." - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker

"The information revolution. Almost everybody is sure ...that it is proceeding with unprecedented speed; and ...that its effects will be more radical than anything that has gone before. Wrong, and wrong again. Both in its speed and its impact, the information revolution uncannily resembles its two predecessors ...The first industrial revolution, triggered by James Watt's improved steam engine in the mid-1770s...did not produce many social and economic changes until the invention of the railroad in 1829 ...Similarly, the invention of the computer in the mid-1940s, ...it was not until 40 years later, with the spread of the Internet in the 1990s, that the information revolution began to bring about big economic and social changes. ...the same emergence of the “super-rich” of their day, characterized both the first and the second industrial revolutions. ...These parallels are close and striking enough to make it almost certain that, as in the earlier industrial revolutions, the main effects of the information revolution on the next society still lie ahead." - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker

"The justices have constitutionally protected obscenity in libraries, filth over cable television, and now unlimited internet pornography." - Phyllis Schlafly, fully Phyllis McAlpin Stewart Schlafly

"Do you ever wonder why the internet is so polluted with pornography? The Supreme Court just reminded us why: it blocks every attempt by Congress to regulate the pornographers. " - Phyllis Schlafly, fully Phyllis McAlpin Stewart Schlafly

"Both the American people and nations that censor the internet should understand that our government is committed to helping promote internet freedom." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Today's electronic village has certainly complicated the challenge of parenting. When It Takes a Village was published, the Internet was largely the province of scientists; no one owned an iPod; and cell phones weighed as much as bricks. Innovations are now coming at an exponentially faster pace, and media saturates our kids' lives as never before. Many of these changes are for the good: when I was in college, a phone call home was rare and a flight home, a once-a-year luxury. Now I know parents who see and speak to their kids every day by computer and video hookups, and I think how much Bill would have loved that when he was campaigning. But knowing that one third of kids under six have TVs in their rooms, that the fashion industry is marketing its latest styles to preteen girls, and that predators stalk our children through the World Wide Web makes me thankful to have raised Chelsea in a less media-saturated time." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"In high technology cultures today, everyone lives each day in a frame of abstract computed time enforced by millions of printed calendars, clock, and watches. In twelfth-century England there were no clocks or watches or wall or desk calendars." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong

"They all need to go on safari together." - Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

"I'm actually an evil bastard in real life. Fark allows me to vent weirdness. Thank god for that, too." - Drew Curtis

"In theory, Equal Time for Nutjobs should be harmless. The people being interviewed are obviously out of their gourds. The problem is that a Mass Media mention gives them instant credibility. The media audience automatically assumes that the Mass Media wouldn’t give coverage to anything they knew was patently false." - Drew Curtis

"It takes people to move crowds in the right direction, crowds by themselves just stand around and mutter." - Drew Curtis

"People don’t really want to watch or read news that does the right thing. The McNeil-Lehrer Newshour was a great example of this. Quality news, mostly information, and no one watched it. It was dry as toast in a diner at breakfast on Saturday morning. Is there any way to fix this? No." - Drew Curtis

"There is no information to indicate she meets the high bar necessary for the next justice on the Supreme Court." - Eli Pariser

"There’s a trick to the 'graceful exit.' It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over — and let it go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out." - Ellen Goodman

"History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought." - Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

"If you put too many people around a flickering idea,you risk blowing it out. A wiser strategy is to let that thrive, and if that starts burning brighter, send more people over to pay attention." - Evan Williams

"The first prerequisite to getting Internet freedom policy right is to convincing its greatest advocates that the Internet is more important and disruptive than they have previously theorized." - Evgeny Morozov

"Is Smart Making Us Dumb? A revolution in technology is allowing previously inanimate objects—from cars to trash cans to teapots—to talk back to us and even guide our behavior. But how much control are we willing to give up?" - Evgeny Morozov

"So good that he is good for nothing." - Italian Proverbs

"Stretch your arm no further than your sleeve will reach." - Italian Proverbs