Attractive Fixed Point

Famous quotes containing the words attractive, fixed and/or point:

    It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times—the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie—seem attractive by comparison.
    Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)

    These earthly godfathers of Heaven’s lights,
    That give a name to every fixed star,
    Have no more profit of their shining nights
    Than those that walk and wot not what they are.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    Ideals possess the strange quality that if they were completely realized they would turn into nonsense. One could easily follow a commandment such as “Thou shalt not kill” to the point of dying of starvation; and I might establish the formula that for the proper functioning of the mesh of our ideals, as in the case of a strainer, the holes are just as important as the mesh.
    Robert Musil (1880–1942)