Daily question, August 7, 2026
Politics
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Source: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Frames politics as a contest between economic classes rather than a debate among formally equal citizens.
Mathematics
We must know. We will know.
Source: David Hilbert, 1930 Konigsberg address
Hilbert said this at the close of his address, one day after Godel had already announced incompleteness at the same conference.
Physics
What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?
Source: Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, 1988
Hawking's closing question: even a complete set of physical laws does not explain why there is a universe for them to govern.
Psychology
The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do.
Source: B. F. Skinner, Contingencies of Reinforcement
Skinner's jab reframes the debate about machine intelligence as a mirror held up to human behavior instead.
Philosophy
The life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Source: Hobbes, Leviathan
Hobbes used this to justify near-absolute state power. Ask what you would trade for safety, and what you would not.
Biology
Everything is connected to everything else.
Source: Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle
The first of his four informal laws of ecology, meant as a warning that actions on one part of a system spread through the rest.
