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Rudyard Kipling 1895

If--
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by wating,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;
If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumpth and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings -- nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!

Isaac (Bible 445 B.C. - 367 A.D)


I form the light, and create darkness:
I make peace, and create evil:
I the LORD do all these things.
[Isa 45:7 KJV]


Form itself is emptiness and emptiness itself is form.
[se ji shi kong - kong ji shi se]
Chuang Tzu(Chou) 300BC


"I, Chuang Chou, once dreamt that I was a butterfly.
I flitted about, from flower to flower,
on a lazy summer day, drifting merrily around and about.
I did as I pleased -- and was ever so happy!
I knew nothing about any Chuang Chou -- and didn't care a bit!
Then, I awakened, a Chuang Chou with all his human trappings!
Now, here is the real question:
Did I, Chuang Chou, dream that I was a butterfly?
Or am I a butterfly, dreaming that I am Chuang Chou?"

Don Juan (Carlos Castaneda, 1951)


Para mi solo recorrer los caminos que tienen corazon,
cualquier camino que tenga corazon.
Por ahi yo recorro, y la unica prueba que vale es
atravesar todo su largo.
Y por ahi yo recorro mirando, mirando, sin aliento.


For me there is only the traveling on the paths that
have a heart, on any path that may have a heart.
There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge
for me is to traverse its full length.
And there I travel--looking, looking, breathlessly.

Kurt Gödel 1931


To every w-consistent recursive class k of
formulae there correspond recursive class-signs R,
such that neither v Gen r, nor Neg(v Gen r)
belongs to Flg(k) (where v is the free variable of r).
Gödel Incompleteness Theorem.
Translation:
Any consistent axiomatic system does include
propositions whose truth is undecidable within that
system and its consistency is, hence,
not provable within that system.
Translation of a translation:
Either mathematics is too big for the human mind or
the human mind is more than a machine.
Any formal system is either inconsistent or incomplete.
in a universe where knowledge defeats us, what can we do but be what we are?
I don't believe in natural science.
[Said to physicist John Bahcall.]

Bei mir gibt es nicht viel Neues;
ich hatte in letzter Zeit eine Menge mit Behörden zu tun.
Kurt Gödel, when being called to the Nazi's military service.


Shakespeare 1599


To be, or not to be- that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die- to sleep-
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die- to sleep.
To sleep- perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub!
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.