Professor at Large: The Cornell Years

CLEESE: When you’re writing, you sometimes pin up in front of you a key word just to make sure you don’t forget where you’re trying to get to.

On the other hand, tortoise mind works best in complex, ill-defined situations when we are not quite sure what sort of an answer we are after, where it’s not clear how many factors are involved, where we may not have all the information, and where it’s hard or impossible to measure the factors.

So you also need to make sure that your tortoise enclosure is one in which your ego, and everyone else’s, feels safe, in which it’s absolutely clear that everyone in the room is treating what everyone else says, or doesn’t say, with friendly, uncritical curiosity.

professor of philosophy, called Raymond Smullyan, says about this. He says: The dilemma is this. If it is really true that the unconverted will suffer eternal punishment, then my deceased parents, my family, my best friends, all those I love dearly are scheduled for eternal torture. Now, if God wants this, if he is the cause of this, then I would,

time at all to confront the real issues. If we look into our lives, we will see clearly how many unimportant tasks, so-called “responsibilities” accumulate to fill them up… . We tell ourselves we want to spend time on the important things of life, but there never is any time. Even simply to get up in the morning, there is so much to do: open the wi

If a man values many other things far more than any value he puts on the work of his inner self, it will be unable to make conjunction with him. He will not resemble that merchant seeking goodly pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all he had and bought it.

SMITH: So do you find it any easier to be creative now? CLEESE: Well, I know how to facilitate it now. It’s all about creating a space. Space is exactly the right word. That means you have to create boundaries—of time and of space. So first, you have to find a place where you can just be quiet. If you’ve got an office with a secretary, you say to t

The entertainment business is really about one thing—the next job—because we all want to stay close to the fire.

Anger is a kind of energy, which, if you can control it, gets a lot done. If you lose your temper, you dissipate the anger and make a bit of a fool of yourself. In England, to be angry, to lose one’s temper, is almost a loss of face. It’s very strange, a huge cultural difference.