Word: dictum
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...Never think of leaving perfume or wine to your heir," advised the Roman epigrammatist Martial. "Administer these to yourself, and let him have the money." The flaw in Martial's dictum, if applied today, is that anyone who enjoys the better known wines, particularly French imports, is unlikely to have much cash left for himself or his survivors. Prices have spiraled upwards cruelly and there is no end in sight...
...already come under attack from critics who argue that it will add to the congestion of Chicago's Loop. It has also been criticized on aesthetic grounds, and is certainly a far cry from the conventional, slick, sheer-walled slab. But S.O.M. was really following the old dictum of Louis Sullivan, one of Chicago's pioneers in skyscraper architecture, that form must follow function. By such a standard, the tower has an honesty of design that most urban buildings lack. Indeed, the tallest building in the world is perhaps a forerunner of skyscrapers with a new kind...
...artists have much in common. Like Joyce, Ibsen lived by "silence, exile and cunning," fleeing Norway to live abroad for 27 years. Both men abandoned their native countries physically and yet were able to repossess and be possessed by them psychically and aesthetically. As a parallel to the Greek dictum "Know thyself," both Ibsen and Joyce say "Free thyself." This is no faddish preachment to "do your own thing" but a call to an austere heroism and indomitability that dares to stand alone...
...missions that the CIA has performed around the world. The agency is also constantly accused of fantastic James Bondian exploits that more often than not it has nothing to do with. The fact is that no nation can any longer accept Secretary of State Henry Stimson's bland dictum of 1929 that "gentlemen do not read other people's mail." In a nuclear-ringed globe, intelligence is more vital than ever. Nor can a world power automatically limit itself to such a passive role as mere information gathering; trying to influence events may at times be necessary...
Such a radical attack on science's vaunted objectivity is supported by no less a scientific dictum than Physicist Werner Heisenberg's half-century-old Principle of Uncertainty, which points out that the very act of observing disturbs the system. Writes Physicist Dietrich Schroeer in his perceptive book Phyics and Its Fifth Dimension: Society: "It seem to be just as the romantics have been claiming. The observer cannot be separated from the experiment...