"Intellectual controversies tend to be like dog fights without the teeth, in which the barking not the biting does the damage."

--

Source : Luís Fernando Veríssimo (2004). “Borges and the eternal orang-utans”, Vintage

Luis Fernando Verissimo

#Dog Quotes #Fighting Quotes #Intellectual Quotes

“For me, the whole idea of the radically new is tied to a close reconsideration of older sources. I like to give myself over to those sources, as points of origin, in order to bring things forward. My approach requires me to internalize my sources as much as possible in the hope that new themes might emerge. The material has to be internalized in order for it to live again. Ultimately, paintings reveal themselves on the basis of what they are. They are inseparable from the physical process that goes into their making.”
“Those who learned to know death, rather than to fear and fight it, become our teachers about life.”
“The paleontological evidence before us today clearly demonstrates ordered progressive change with the successive development of new faunal and floral assemblages through the changing epochs of our earth's history. There should be no real conflict between science, which is the search for truth, and Christ's teachings, which I hold to be truth itself. It is only when scientists remove God from creation that the Christian is faced with an irreconcilable situation.”
“Nothing feebler than a man does the earth raise up, of all the things which breathe and move on the earth, for he believes that he will never suffer evil in the future, as long as the gods give him success and he flourishes in his strength; but when the blessed gods bring sorrows too to pass, even these he bears, against his will, with steadfast spirit, for the thoughts of earthly men are like the day which the father of gods and men brings upon them.”
“You know how to drive a car, but you do not know how to drive your life!”
“You win by trying. And failing. Test, try, fail, measure, evolve, repeat, persist, ...”
“Then I saw Juli. She was two tables away from me, facing my direction. Only she wasn't looking at me. She was looking at Jon, her eyes all sparkly and laughing. My heart lurched. What was she laughing about? What were they talking about? How could she sit there and look so... beautiful? I felt myself spinning out of control. It was weird. Like I couldn't even steer my own body. I'd always thought Jon was pretty cool, but right then I wanted to go over and throw him across the room.”
“Yes, there's a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it, we must do better.”

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