Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. … Humanity is in "final exam" as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe.
When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
I failed in some subjects in exam, but my friend passed in all. Now he is an engineer in Microsoft and I am the owner of Microsoft.
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me. -- Woody Allen
Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem Eng. 130 midterm. Once again a student did not receive a single point on his exam. Newell has now tossed 5 shutouts this quarter. Newell's earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%.
Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit moulding her body, which was as warm as seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman driven -- fueled by a single accelerant -- and she needed a man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road: a man like Alf Romeo. -- Rachel Sheeley, winner The hair ball blocking the drain of the shower reminded Laura she would never see her little dog Pritzi again. -- Claudia Fields, runner-up It could have been an organically based disturbance of the brain -- perhaps a tumor or a metabolic deficiency -- but after a thorough neurological exam it was determined that Byron was simply a jerk. -- Jeff Jahnke, runner-up Winners in the 7th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest. The contest is named after the author of the immortal lines: "It was a dark and stormy night." The object of the contest is to write the opening sentence of the worst possible novel.
Fifth Law of Applied Terror: If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book. Corollary: If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live.
It's grad exam time... COMPUTER SCIENCE Inside your desk you'll find a listing of the DEC/VMS operating system in IBM 1710 machine code. Show what changes are necessary to convert this code into a UNIX Berkeley 7 operating system. Prove that these fixes are bug free and run correctly. You should gain at least 150% efficiency in the new system. (You should take no more than 10 minutes on this question.) MATHEMATICS If X equals PI times R
it would take a fire ant to drill a hole through a dill pickle, if the
length-girth ratio of the ant to the pickle were 98.17:1.
GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
Describe the Universe. Give three examples.
"I'm a doctor, not a mechanic." -- "The Doomsday Machine", when asked if he had heard of the idea of a doomsday machine. "I'm a doctor, not an escalator." -- "Friday's Child", when asked to help the very pregnant Ellen up a steep incline. "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer." -- Devil in the Dark", when asked to patch up the Horta. "I'm a doctor, not an engineer." -- "Mirror, Mirror", when asked by Scotty for help in Engineering aboard the ISS Enterprise. "I'm a doctor, not a coalminer." -- "The Empath", on being beneath the surface of Minara 2. "I'm a surgeon, not a psychiatrist." -- "City on the Edge of Forever", on Edith Keeler's remark that Kirk talked strangely. "I'm no magician, Spock, just an old country doctor." -- "The Deadly Years", to Spock while trying to cure the aging effects of the rogue comet near Gamma Hydra 4. "What am I, a doctor or a moonshuttle conductor?" -- "The Corbomite Maneuver", when Kirk rushed off from a physical exam to answer the alert.
It's grad exam time... MEDICINE You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected. (You have 15 minutes.) HISTORY Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on its social, political, economic, religious and philisophical impact upon Europe, Asia, America, and Africa. Be brief, concise, and specific. BIOLOGY Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture if this form of life had been created 500 million years ago or earlier, with special attention to its probable effect on the English parliamentary system.
The example of the saints is proposed to every one, so that the great actions shown us may encourage us to undertake smaller things.--VEN. LOUIS DE GRANADA.
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality... We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.
Ein edles Beispiel macht die schweren Thaten leicht=--A noble example makes difficult enterprises easy.
What the power to obtain credit (especially, of course, bank credit), means to-day we shall discuss when we come to examine the part played by finance in industrial Capitalism; but we note here that the advantage enjoyed in this department by the larger unit is, again, as in the other instances given, out of proportion to the size of the units engaged. The small craftsman can hardly borrow at all—perhaps a few pounds privately at ruinous interest. The somewhat larger man can borrow more, in proportion, upon the security of his business, but he is not “interesting” to the banker. The owner—or controller—of a very large business can borrow on quite another scale. He does not command, say, ten times the credit of a rival with a tenth of his business; he commands twenty or thirty times the amount and on easier terms. [ The Restoration of Property . New York: Sheed and Ward, 1936, p. 50.]
A trial so long, so constant and so uniform, should surely convince us of our inability to arrive at good by our own strength, but example teaches us but little. No resemblance is so exact but that there is some slight difference, and hence we expect that our endeavour will not be foiled on this occasion as before. Thus while the present never satisfies, experience deceives us, and from misfortune to misfortune leads us on to death, eternal crown of sorrows.
I think that one of our most important tasks is to convince others that there's nothing to fear in difference; that difference, in fact, is one of the healthiest and most invigorating of human characteristics without which life would become meaningless. Here lies the power of the liberal way: not in making the whole world Unitarian, but in helping ourselves and others to see some of the possibilities inherent in viewpoints other than one's own; in encouraging the free interchange of ideas; in welcoming fresh approaches to the problems of life; in urging the fullest, most vigorous use of critical self-examination.
We must therefore make an end, and after having examined these powers in their effects, recognise what they are in themselves, and see if reason has power and grasp capable of seizing the truth.
Two things, well considered, would prevent many quarrels: first, to have it well ascertained whether we are not disputing about terms rather than things; and, secondly, to examine whether that on which we differ is worth contending about.
In democratic countries as well as elsewhere most of the branches of productive industry are carried on at a small cost by men little removed by their wealth or education above the level of those whom they employ. These manufacturing speculators are extremely numerous; their interests differ; they cannot therefore easily concert or combine their exertions. On the other hand, the workmen have always some sure resources which enable them to refuse to work when they cannot get what they conceive to be the fair price of their labor. In the constant struggle for wages that is going on between these two classes, their strength is divided and success alternates from one to the other. It is even probable that in the end the interest of the working class will prevail, for the high wages which they have already obtained make them every day less dependent on their masters, and as they grow more independent, they have greater facilities for obtaining a further increase of wages. I shall take for example that branch of productive industry which is still at the present day the most generally followed in France and in almost all the countries of the world, the cultivation of the soil. In France most of those who labor for hire in agriculture are themselves owners of certain plots of ground, which just enable them to subsist without working for anyone else. When these laborers come to offer their services to a neighboring landowner or farmer, if he refuses them a certain rate of wages they retire to their own small property and await another opportunity. [ Democracy in America, Volume II , pp. 189-190.]
Business and labor are both in the same boat and it is almost suicidal for workers to think they can prosper by making it less profitable (or completely unprofitable) to employ them. Most glaring example of this kind of suicide is the Maritime Union which was so successful in getting all the wage increases it demanded that the American flag vanished from the seven seas…. Railroad labor has been almost equally successful in pricing itself out of the market…. Admittedly these may be extreme examples of labor pricing itself out of work, but union leaders would be wise to recognize before it is too late that they are harnessing the profit motive to disemployment when they force wage increases far in excess of productivity gains…. [S]uccess will depend on the employers’ willingness to offer such generous profit sharing that every worker will realize that his own bread is richly buttered on the same side as his employer’s and will have a maximum incentive to maximize productivity and minimize waste in order to increase his own income.
Once one is caught up into the material world not one person in ten thousand finds the time to form literary taste, to examine the validity of philosophic concepts for himself, or to form what, for lack of a better phrase, I might call the wise and tragic sense of life.
The Open Market Committee, as presently established, is plainly not in the public interest. This committee must be operated by purely public servants, representatives of the people as a whole and not any single interest group. The Open Market Committee should be abolished, and its powers transferred to the Federal Reserve Board — the present public members of the committee, with reasonably short terms of office. Also, the Federal Advisory Committee should be enlarged and reorganized. Members should be chosen for the broadest possible representation of the public interest, their main qualification: ability. It may seem strange, but Congress has never developed a set of goals for guiding Federal Reserve policy. In founding the System, Congress spoke about the country’s need for “an elastic currency.” Since then, Congress has passed the Full Employment Act, declaring its general intention to promote “maximum employment, production, and purchasing power.” But it has never directly counseled the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has filled this vacuum itself. The ends its policies are intended to achieve are those chosen by the Federal Reserve — all certainly admirable, but not necessarily those which the Federal Reserve should take on itself to pursue. For example, there have been times when the Federal Reserve has restricted the money supply and raised interest rates to gain an end, which had much better been left to another Government agency or the Congress to attain. The country could have had lower interest rates without sacrificing anything else. [ A Primer on Money, supra , p. 4.]
No man is a prophet in his own country and Louis Kelso is no exception…. Kelso stands in a long and honorable tradition of nonaccepted men of ideas: In his case, however, it is not so much that conservative vested interests deny the validity of his ideas or of his system, but that apathy and ignorance have not examined them. [ Daily Commercial News , San Francisco, June 26, 1970.]
Justice is what is established, and thus all our established laws are necessarily held to be just without being examined, because they are established.
Personally I do not resort to force — not even the force of law — to advance moral reforms. I prefer education, argument, persuasion, and above all the influence of example — of fashion.
I see first that they are a people wholly composed of brethren, and whereas all others are formed by the assemblage of an infinity of families, this, though so prodigiously fruitful, has sprung from one man only, and being thus all one flesh, and members one of another, they form a powerful state consisting of one family, a fact without example.
_Types._--When once the secret is disclosed it is impossible not to see it If the Old Testament be read in this light, we shall see if the sacrifices were real; if the fatherhood of Abraham was the true cause of the friendship of God; that the promised land was not the true place of rest. These were then but types. If in the same way we examine all those ordained ceremonies, and all those commandments which are not of charity, we shall see that they are types.
_Arab_. Noble prince, I have heard much of thy great forbearance, and came only to try thee. Thy gentleness is indeed very great, and has no like among men. I pray God that thy life may be long, and thy forbearance be ever a noble example to which men may look up!
The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.--_Mrs. Balfour._
Componitur orbis / Regis ad exemplum; nec sic inflectere sensus / Humanos edicta valent, quam vita regentis=--Manners are fashioned after the example of the king, and edicts have less effect on them than the life of the ruler.
How many pictures have preserved the semblance of divine beauty of which time or death had in a brief space destroyed the living example: and the work of the painter has become more honoured than that of nature, his master!
Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire; / Threaten the threatner, and outface the brow / Of bragging horror; so shall inferior eyes, / That borrow their behaviours from the great, / Grow great by your example, and put on / The dauntless spirit of resolution.
God sometimes bestows gifts just that love may have something to renounce. The things that He puts into our hands are possibly put there that we may have the opportunity of showing what is in our heart. Oh, that there were in us a fervor of love that would lead us to examine everything that belongs to us, to ascertain how it might be made a means of showing our affection to Christ!--_George Bowen._
One world, one mankind cannot exist in the face of six, four or even two scales of values: We shall be torn apart by this disparity of rhythm, this disparity of vibrations.… Our 20th Century has proved to be more cruel than preceding centuries, and the first fifty years have not erased all its horrors; our world is rent asunder by those same old cave-age emotions of greed, envy, lack of control, mutual hostility which have picked up in passing respectable pseudonyms like class struggle, radical conflict, struggle of the masses, trade-union disputes. The primeval refusal to accept a compromise has been turned into a theoretical principle and is considered the virtue of orthodoxy. It demands millions of sacrifices in ceaseless civil wars, it drums into our souls that there is no such thing as unchanging, universal concepts of goodness and justice, that they are all fluctuating and inconstant.… Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been demonstrated and proved many times in history. What is more, it is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant justification. The world is being inundated by the brazen conviction that power can do anything, justice nothing.… The young, at an age when they have not yet any experience other than sexual, when they do not yet have years of personal suffering and personal understanding behind them, are jubilantly repeating our depraved Russian blunders of the 19th Century, under the impression that they are discovering something new. They acclaim the latest wretched degradation on the part of the Chinese Red Guards as a joyous example. In shallow lack of understanding of the age-old essence of mankind, in the naive confidence of inexperienced hearts they cry: Let us drive away those cruel, greedy oppressors, governments, and the new ones (we), having just laid aside grenades and rifles, will be just and understanding. Far from it.… But of those who have lived more and understand, those who could oppose these young—many do not dare oppose, they even suck up, anything not to appear conservative. Another Russian phenomenon of the 19th Century which Dostoyevsky called slavery to progressive quirks.… The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles.… The price of cowardice will only be evil. We shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices. [ The Wall Street Journal , September 6, 1972, p. 14.]
We have not the innocence of Eden; but by God's help and Christ's example, we may have the victory of Gethsemane.
You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.
But perhaps the subject goes beyond the reach of reason. We will therefore examine what she has to say on questions within her powers. If there be anything to which her own interest must have made her apply herself most seriously, it is the search after her sovereign good. Let us see then in what these strong and clearsighted souls have placed it, and whether they agree.
Thus if there were division in the Church, and the Arians, for example, who no less than Catholics said they were founded on Scripture, had worked miracles, and the Catholics had worked none, men had been led into error.
Habet aliquid ex iniquo omne magnum exemplum, quod contra singulos, utilitate publica rependitur=--Every great example of punishment has in it some tincture of injustice, but the wrong to individuals is compensated by the promotion of the public good.
We should not examine articles of faith with a curious and subtle spirit. It is sufficient for us to know that the Church proposes them. We can never be deceived in believing them.--ST. VINCENT DE PAUL.
Men trust rather to their eyes than to their ears; the effect of precepts is therefore slow and tedious, whilst that of examples is summary and effectual.
Lieut Brooke, of the American Navy, some years ago invented a most ingenious machine, by which a considerable portion of the superficial layer of the sea-bottom can be scooped out and brought up from any depth to which the lead descends. In 1853, Lieut. Brooke obtained mud from the bottom of the North Atlantic, between Newfoundland and the Azores, at a depth of more than 10,000 feet, or two miles, by the help of this sounding apparatus. The specimens were sent for examination to Ehrenberg of Berlin, and to Bailey of West Point, and those able microscopists found that this deep-sea mud was almost entirety composed of the skeletons of living organisms--the greater proportion of these being just like the _Globigerinæ_ already known to occur in the chalk.
The best way to come to truth is to examine things as they really are, and not to conclude they are, as we have been taught by others to imagine.
In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.
Love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.
So all the apparent weaknesses are strength. Example: the two genealogies in Saint Matthew and Saint Luke. What can be more clear than that this was not concerted?
The superior man examines his heart, that there may be nothing wrong there, and that he may have no cause for dissatisfaction with himself. That wherein the superior man cannot be equaled is simply this — his work which other men cannot see.
Essentially, this is undoubtedly what had to happen. But Rome as a state retained too much of pagan civilization and wisdom—for example, the very aims and basic principles of the state. Whereas Christ’s Church, having entered the state, no doubt could give up none of its own basic principles, of that rock on which it stood, and could pursue none but its own aims, once firmly established and shown to it by the Lord himself, among which was the transforming of the whole world, and therefore of the whole ancient pagan state, into the Church. Thus (that is, for future purposes), it is not the Church that should seek a definite place for itself in the state, like ‘any social organization’ or ‘organization of men for religious purposes’ (as the author I was objecting to refers to the Church), but, on the contrary, every earthly state must eventually be wholly transformed into the Church and become nothing else but the Church, rejecting whichever of its aims are incompatible with those of the Church. And all of this will in no way demean it, will take away neither its honor nor its glory as a great state, nor the glory of its rulers, but will only turn it from a false, still pagan and erroneous path, onto the right and true path that alone leads to eternal goals.
That's how I knew, for example, that Private Seamus Fletcher, 45B-76423, was beating his wife and children every night.