If we were all perfected beings, we wouldn't be here in the physical world.
Man only becomes independent of this physical world when he learns to consider the objects around him as symbols. He must, for this reason, seek to acquire a moral relationship to them.
Symmetries are the playing field on which the physical world works and which determine the rules of the game. The symmetries of nature determine for us things that remain constant, that can't be changed. Those are the guideposts in physics, the quantities like energy and momentum.
The two great agents of the physical world have become subject to the will of man and have been made subservient to his wants and enjoyments; I allude to steam and electricity, under whatever name the latter may be called.
Since Plato, we have been considering the nature of knowledge, the meaning of meaning and the status of the physical world.
Change or be changed, right? And what we mean by that is that climate change, if we don't change course, if we don't change our political and economic system, is going to change everything about our physical world.
There's a kind of optimism specifically within Christianity about the world - about whose side God is on. Well, I didn't have any of that in my background. I had physicality and chaos.
When I reached 80, my world turned upside down physically. I've had a lot of physical problems.
After the Second World War, I returned to California to study composition with Darius Milhaud, who wrote wonderful works like 'Le Boeuf sur le Toit' and 'La Cretion du Monde.' I especially enjoy his work for two pianos, 'Scaramouche.'
In a complex and troubling world, who wouldn't want to simplify? Everybody does. Everybody wants to simplify and put up a picket fence.
A picture book is a small door to the enormous world of the visual arts, and they're often the first art a young person sees.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In the nonprofit world, the right picture is worth tens of thousands of dollars. I use PhotoPad to sync our Samasource Flickr account to my iPad and slip it out of my purse at cocktail parties to tell our story.
I do Thai boxing Mondays, jujitsu Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Wednesdays I do boxing with Mark - he was a world champion at one point. I absolutely love it. I actually have a punching bag outside in my garden. I'm obsessed with working out. I eat like a pig, so it kind of makes up for that.
I wouldn't want to get my pigeon chest out in front of anyone. I don't think the world needs it. I'd probably get a yellow card anyway.
I am the luckiest novelist in the world. I was a first-time novelist who wasn't awash in rejection slips, whose manuscript didn't disappear in slush piles. I have had a wonderful time.
When I left Harvard Pilgrim, it had been ranked first in the nation by U.S. News and World Report for customer satisfaction for six years in a row.
When I was in the middle of the 'Scott Pilgrim' series, and it was slowly becoming more popular, though still not financially solvent, I had this real bratty instinct to turn around and do something super arty and dark. I felt dismissed by comics culture, stuck in between the artcomix world and the nerdcomix world, and I was cranky about it.
As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow.
As with the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, the origins of Shearith Israel trace back to a small group of religious freedom-seekers and a treacherous ocean passage to the New World.
The human world is a long way from meeting the needs of the present, and it is borrowing massively from the future - not only by piling up money debt, but also by degrading the resources from which all real wealth ultimately comes.
