Most quotes are from memory.  They may not be the exact words.

Regarding the internal workings of a biological cell: Things there are not only stranger than we imaging but stranger than we can  imagine.

– – – Biologist J.B.H. Haldane

An independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor the agencies of observation.

– – – Nels Bohr, Father of Quantum Physics

Past present and future are a stubbornly persistent illusion.

– – – Albert Einstein

The “father of Western philosophy”, René Descartes hypothesized “mind-body dualism”, that mental and physical action carry on in parallel but distinct courses.  Philosopher Gilbert Ryle scoffs at this notion as “the ghost in the machine.”  In The Second Creation  Robert P. Cease and Charles C. Mann  conclude, based on the findings of Quantum Physics, Descartes–as I see Ryles too–does appear mistaken, “not because there is no ghost, because there is no machine.”

Physical constructs are free creations of the human mind and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.

– – – Albert Einstein

View this fleeting world like this:

Like stars fading and vanishing at dawn,

Like bubbles on a fast moving stream,

Like morning due drops evaporating on blades of grass,

Like a candle flickering in a strong wind,

Echoes, mirages, phantoms, hallucinations, and a dream.

– – – The Buddha

Thoughts to ponder.

Two and a half millennia back, China started building a wall to hold out uncivilized nomads to the north.  Eight centuries later Hadrian’s wall bisected Britannia to protect Roman occupiers from invasion by native Celts.  In 1961 the German Democratic Republic built a wall to corral capitalists in and, more important, keep their people out of West Berlin.  Today, despite repeated insistence Mexico will pay, Donald Trump wants billions of American taxpayers’ dollars to build a wall along our southern border to keep folks he views as brown-skinned riffraff out.

Apart from walls being archaic defenses, Trump’s notion of one between the United States and Mexico is dumb!  At the beginning twenty-fist century, it’s like quarrying stone with hammers and chisels, hauling it on ox carts, and hoisting the blocks by muscle power–Whoa!  Hold on there!  Sweat equity!  Is that it?  Mexico’s share?  Donald, you clever devil!

Between satellites, fixed and rotor wing aircraft, drones, motion detectors, regular and infrared cameras, guard towers, and control rooms like those monitoring electrical grids, gas and oil pipelines, water and sewer systems, and air and railroad traffic worldwide, augmented by boots on the ground, America can guard her southern border with sophistication and efficacy exceeding and probably cheaper than some stupid wall!  Donald!  Get a grip!

The history of border walls testifies to the failure of border walls.  We go around, over, through, and under them.  Border walls are monuments to fear, fear of strangers.  And we’re all strangers.  Quoting the Swamp Sage Pogo Possum–remember?–“We has met the enemy and he is us.”

How many of us possess the wisdom, depth of character, and courage to do what this man did?  And virtually zero publicity.  https://voxpopulisphere.com/2015/12/11/10733/