Nils John Nilsson quotes

  • History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past.

  • What we have done in the past is not sufficient now to prepare our youth.

  • It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future.

  • The experience you’ve had may be unwanted, may amount to nothing but damage and waste, but experience has substance, is factual, authoritative, lives on in your past and affects your present, whatever you attempt to do about it.

  • A man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal machine.

  • I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.

  • There is a thrill of vulnerability at all airshows. There is no way of making everything completely safe. When the machines are being thrashed to capacity and the pilots are flying at their limits to dazzle, things are bound to go wrong sometimes. There have been some historic disasters, but the danger is a part of the attraction.

  • I'm involved in some action scenes, so they'll train me for that. I'll be working with my acting coach to prepare for my character.

  • ...guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.

  • Without knowledge action is useless and knowledge without action is futile.