"To say that God is the ultimate explanation of everything is not to say that theism is the explanation of everything."

     Stephen M. Barr, in his contribution to "Nagel's untimely idea:  Is there more to nature than matter?", Commonweal 140, no. 9 (May 17, 2013):  19 (14-19).

Sitzfleisch

"I believe the main reason why [Oppenheimer] failed [to be a great scientist] was a lack of Sitzfleisch.  Sitzfleisch is a German word with no equivalent in English.  The literal translation is 'Sitflesh.'  It means the ability to sit still and work quietly.  He could never sit still long enough to do a difficult calculation.  His calculations were always done hastily and often full of mistakes. . . .
     "In addition to his restlessness, Oppenheimer had another quality. . . . He always wanted to be at the center.  This quality is good for soldiers and politicians but bad for original thinkers.  He paid too much attention to famous people working on fashionable topics, while ignoring less famous people working away from the mainstream of science."

     Freeman Dyson, "Oppenheimer:  the shape of genius," New York review of books 60, no. 13 (August 15, 2013):  19 (18-19).

"Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds."

Oppenheimer "never regretted his role as the chief architect of the bomb. . . .
     "Oppenheimer continued for the rest of his life to be proud of his achievement at Los Alamos.  We know this because he protested vigorously in 1964 when the German playwright Heinar Kipphardt wrote a play portraying him as a tragic hero regretting his actions.  Oppenheimer threatened to sue Kipphardt and the producers of the play if they continued to misrepresent him.  The producers cut out the offending passages from the play, and the case never went to court.  Oppenheimer continued to block later attempts to produce the play in London and New York."

     Freeman Dyson, "Oppenheimer:  the shape of genius," New York review of books 60, no. 13 (August 15, 2013):  19 (18-19).  So in quoting Vishnu, Oppenheimer was in no way second-guessing himself.

"Gen. M. should have no problem on his end but I may sway in the breeze a bit."

     "But the length of standing-still required for the exposure was never a pleasant exertion for [Lincoln].  In early October 1862, [Matthew] Brady sent one of his photographers, Alexander Gardner, to take a series of pictures at General George McClellan's headquarters at Antietam; and Lincoln, whose disgust at McClellan's failure to move his troops into battle was by then an open secret, commented on the arrangements for the group portraits:  'General McClellan and myself are to be photographed tomorrow A.M. by Mr. Gardner if we can be still long enough.  I feel Gen. M. should have no problem on his end but I may sway in the breeze a bit.'"

     David Bromwich, "The Civil War pictures:  true or false?", New York review of books 60, no. 13 (August 15, 2013), 8 (8-10).

Knowing by different knowledges

"the unity of the day is taken from the unity of the thing known, which, however, can be known by different knowledges."

"unitas diei accipitur secundum unitatem rei cognitae, quae tamen diversis cognitionibus cognosci potest."

     Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I.58.7.ad 1, trans. Ralph McInerny (Thomas Aquinas: selected writings, ed. & trans. Ralph McInerny (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1998), 409).
     The FEDP translation was much less pungent:

the day's unit is taken according to the unit of the thing understood; which, nevertheless, can be apprehended by various ways of knowing it.

     Aquinas refers here to the Augustinian distinction between the morning and the evening knowledge of the angels, i.e.

1. their knowledge of things "per rationes rerum in verbo existentes" (by the rationes of things existing in the Word), and
2. their knowledge of things "per species innatas" (by the species innate in and connatural to them, which species they receive from God, there being "likenesses of creatures in the mind of the angel, not as received from these creatures but rather from God, who is the cause of the creatures in whom the likenesses of things first exist" (I.55.2.ad 1 (380), italics mine)).

But something similar could be said of human knowledge (received, however, from creatures (even divine revelation comes via creatures), or in other words the university.

"a small-p protestant."

     "For me, accepting Tillich's criticism of liberal Protestantism, and of Protestantism itself (though not the Protestant principle), meant that I could only be a small-p protestant."

     Robert N. Bellah, "A reply to my critics," First things no. 234 (June/July 2013), 51.

"Nothing is easier than to use the word [God], and mean nothing by it."

     "This is the doctrine which belief in a God implies in the mind of a Catholic:  if it means any thing, it means all this, and cannot keep from meaning all this, and a great deal more; and, even though there were nothing in the religious tenets of the last three centuries to disparage dogmatic truth, still, even then, I should have difficulty in believing that a doctrine so mysterious, so peremptory, approved itself as a matter of course to educated men of this day, who gave their minds attentively to consider it.  Rather, in a state of society such as ours, in which authority, prescription, tradition, habit, moral instinct, and the divine influences go for nothing, in which patience of thought, and depth and consistency of view, are scorned as subtle and scholastic, in which free discussion and fallible judgment are prized as the birthright of each individual, I must be excused if I exercise towards this age, as regards its belief in this doctrine, some portion of that scepticism which it exercises towards every received but unscrutinized assertion whatever.  I cannot take it for granted, I must have it brought home to me by tangible evidence, that the spirit of the age means by the Supreme Being what Catholics mean.  Nay, it would be a relief to my mind to gain some ground of assurance, that the parties influenced by that spirit had, I will not say, a true apprehension of God, but even so much as the idea of what a true apprehension is.
     "Nothing is easier than to use the word, and mean nothing by it.  The heathens used to say, 'God wills', when they meant 'Fate'; 'God provides', when they meant 'Chance'; 'God acts', when they meant 'Instinct' or 'Sense'; and 'God is everywhere', when they meant 'the Soul of Nature'.  The Almighty is something infinitely different from a principle, or a centre of action, or a quality, or a generalization of phenomena.  If, then, by the word, you do but mean a Being who keeps the world in order, who acts in it, but only through what are called laws of Nature, who is more certain not to act at all than to act independent of those laws, who is known and approached indeed, but only through the medium of those laws; such a God it is not difficult for any one to conceive, not difficult for any one to endure.  If, I say, as you would revolutionize society, so you would revolutionize heaven, if you have changed the divine sovereignty into a sort of constitutional monarchy, in which the Throne has honour and ceremonial enough, but cannot issue the most ordinary command except through legal forms and precedents, and with the counter-signature of a minister, then belief in a God is no more than an acknowledgment of existing, sensible powers and phenomena, which none but an idiot can deny.  If the Supreme Being is powerful or skilful, just so far forth as the telescope shows power, and the microscope shows skill, if His moral law is to be ascertained simply by the physical processes of the animal frame, or His will gathered from the immediate issues of human affairs, if His Essence is just as high and deep and broad and long as the universe, and no more; if this be the fact, then will I confess that there is no specific science about God, that theology is but a name, and a protest in its behalf an hypocrisy.  Then is He but coincident with the laws of the universe; then is He but a function, or correlative, or subjective reflection and mental impression, of each phenomenon of the material or moral world, as it flits before us.  Then, pious as it is to think of Him, while the pageant of experiment or abstract reasoning passes by, still, such piety is nothing more than a poetry of thought or an ornament of language, and has not even an infinitesimal influence upon philosophy or science, of which it is rather the parasitical production.
     "I understand, in that case, why Theology should require no specific teaching, for there is nothing to mistake about; why it is powerless against scientific anticipations, for it merely is one of them; why it is simply absurd in its denunciations of heresy, for heresy does not lie in the region of fact and experiment.  I understand, in that case, how it is that the religious sense is but a 'sentiment', and its exercise a 'gratifying treat', for it is like the sense of the beautiful or the sublime.  I understand how the contemplation of the universe 'leads onward to divine truth', for divine truth is not something separate from Nature, but it is Nature with a divine glow upon it.  I understand the zeal expressed for Physical Theology, for this study is but a mode of looking at Physical Nature, a certain view taken of Nature, private and personal, which one man has, and another has not, which gifted minds strike out, which others see to be admirable and ingenious, and which all would be the better for adopting.  It is but the theology of Nature, just as we talk of the philosophy or the romance of history, or the poetry of childhood, or the picturesque, or the sentimental, or the humorous, or any other abstract quality, which the genius or the caprice of the individual, or the fashion of the day, or the consent of the world, recognizes in any set of objects which are subjected to its contemplation."

     John Henry Newman, The idea of a university defined and illustrated, Discourse II.7 (ed. I. T. Ker (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1976), 46-48).