The Brain Yearning to Find a Path

About how Beethoven created Ode to Joy and heard it in his head even when he was deaf (he had mapped hearing so well in his brain):

“[Beethoven] heard it in a way that demonstrates our hunger for human adaptability. … The brain yearning to find a path to the outside world.”

~ John Hockenberry, journalist
At the human2.0 conference at the MIT Media Lab, ten minutes ago.

Censorship

The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It’s like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can’t have steak.
~ Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold the Moon

Did you ever hear anyone say, “That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me?”
~ Joseph Henry Jackson

Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.
~ Potter Stewart

The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

~ Henry Steele Commager

Censorship is advertising paid by the government.

~ Federico Fellini

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

~ George Bernard Shaw

The trouble with censors is that they worry if a girl has cleavage. They ought to worry if she hasn’t any.
~ Marilyn Monroe

Rules and Decisions

“Too many rules get in the way of leadership. They just put you in a box . . . . People set rules to keep from making decisions.”

“The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions. Not me. I don’t want to be a manager or a dictator. I want to be a leader—and leadership is ongoing, adjustable, flexible, and dynamic. As such, leaders have to maintain a certain amount of discretion.”

~ Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K)