“Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.
- Gustave Flaubert” —
- Gustave Flaubert” —
December 2010
66 posts
“Replace fear of the unknown with curiosity. - anon”
—
“Contradiction is what keeps sanity in place.
— Gustave Flaubert” —
— Gustave Flaubert” —
“The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrew
Not to be born is the best for man
The second best is formal order
The dance’s pattern, dance while you can.
Dance, dance, for the figure is easy
The tune is catching and will not stop
Dance till the stars come down with the rafters
Dance, dance, dance till you drop
— W.H. Auden, Death’s Echo” —
Not to be born is the best for man
The second best is formal order
The dance’s pattern, dance while you can.
Dance, dance, for the figure is easy
The tune is catching and will not stop
Dance till the stars come down with the rafters
Dance, dance, dance till you drop
— W.H. Auden, Death’s Echo” —
“
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness,
The gateway to all understanding.
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of the Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
— Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow” —
— Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow” —
“It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error, it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.
— US Supreme Court Justice Robert M. Jackson, 1950” —
— US Supreme Court Justice Robert M. Jackson, 1950” —
“Ubi Dubium ibi libertas
Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
- Latin Proverb” —
Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
- Latin Proverb” —
“There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
— George Washington, address to Congress, January 8, 1790” —
— George Washington, address to Congress, January 8, 1790” —
“We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.
— Henri Poincaré” —
— Henri Poincaré” —
“We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free.
— Epictetus” —
— Epictetus” —
“
The Lord Buddha replied to the Venerable Sariputra:
“In some village, city, market town, country district, province, kingdom, or capital there lived a householder, old, advanced in years, decrepit, weak in health and strength, but rich, wealthy, and well-to-do. His house was a large one, both extensive and high, and it was old, having been built a long time ago. It was inhabited by many living beings, some two, three, four, or five hundred. It had been one single door only. It was thatched with straw, its terraces had fallen down, its foundations were rotten, its walls, matting-screens, and plaster were in an advanced state of decay. Suddenly a great blaze of fire broke out, and the house started burning on all sides. And that man had many young sons, five, or ten, or twenty, and he himself got out of the house.
“When that man saw his own house ablaze all around with that great mass of fire, he became afraid and trembled, his mind became agitated, and he thought to himself: ‘I, it is true, have been competent enough to run out of the door, and to escape from my burning house, quickly and safely, without being touched or scorched by that great mass of fire. But what about my sons, my young boys, my little sons? there, in this burning house, they play, sport, and amuse themselves with all sorts of games. They do not know that this dwelling is afire, they do not understand it, do not perceive it, pay no attention to it, and so they feel no agitation. Though threatened by this great fire, though in such close contact with so much ill, they pay no attention to their danger, and make no efforts to get out.’ “
-The Saddharmapundarika, in Buddhist Scriptures, as quoted in Carl Sagan’s The Demon Haunted World
” —
“So we keep asking,
over and over,
Until a handful of earth
Stops our mouth —
But is that an answer?
— Heinrich Heine, Lazarus (1854)” —
over and over,
Until a handful of earth
Stops our mouth —
But is that an answer?
— Heinrich Heine, Lazarus (1854)” —
“[E]very time a savage tracks his game he employs a minuteness of observation, and an accuracy of inductive and deductive reasoning which , applied to other matters, would assure some reputation as a man of science… [T]he intellectual labour of a “good hunter or warrior” considerably exceeds that of an ordinary Englishman.
— Thomas h. Huxley” —
— Thomas h. Huxley” —
“I’d feel real trapped, in this life, right now, if I didn’t know I could commit suicide at any second.
— Hunter S. Thompson” —
— Hunter S. Thompson” —
November 2010
64 posts
“The mind of man - how far will it advance? Where will its daring impudence find limits? If human villainy and human life shall wax in due proportion, if the son shall always grow in wickedness past his father, the gods must add another world to this that all sinners may have space enough.
— Euripedes, Hippolytus” —
— Euripedes, Hippolytus” —
“[I]gnorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
- Charles Darwin” —
- Charles Darwin” —
“The human understanding is no dry light, but receives infusion from the will and affections; whence proceed sciences which may be called “sciences as one would.” For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes. Therefore he rejects difficult things from impatience of research; sober things, because they narrow hope; the deeper things of nature, from superstition; the light of experience, from arrogance, and pride; things not commonly believed, out of deference to the opinion of the vulgar. Numberless in short are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections color and infect the understanding.
— Francis Bacon, Novum Organon” —
— Francis Bacon, Novum Organon” —
“[M]agic, it must be remembered, is an art which demands collaboration between the artist and his public.
— E.M. Butler, The Myth of Magus” —
— E.M. Butler, The Myth of Magus” —
“True memories seemed like phantoms, while false memories were so convincing that they replaced reality.
— Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Strange Pilgrims” —
— Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Strange Pilgrims” —
“A credulous mind… finds most delight in believing strange things, and the stranger they are the easier they pass with him; but never regards those that are plain and feasible, for every man can believe such.
— Samuel Butler” —
— Samuel Butler” —
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
— Sherlock Holmes, in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” —
— Sherlock Holmes, in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” —
“[As] children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror…
— Lucretius” —
— Lucretius” —
“Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvelous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified.
— Thomas Henry Huxley” —
— Thomas Henry Huxley” —
“
“Truly, that which makes me believe there is no inhabitant on this sphere, is that it seems to me that no sensible being would be willing to live here.”
“Well then!” said Micromegas, “perhaps the beings that inhabit it do not possess good sense.”
— One alien to another, on approaching the Earth in VOLTAIRE’s Micromegas: A Philisophical History
” —
“All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
— Albert Einstein” —
— Albert Einstein” —
“With the scientific view, or my father’s view, that we should look to see what’s true and what may be or may not be true, once you start doubting, which I think to me is a very fundamental part of my soul, to doubt and to ask, and when you doubt and ask it gets a little harder to believe. You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit, and if I can’t figure it out, then I go on to something else, but I don’t have to know an answer, I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn’t frighten me.
— Richard P. Feynman” —
— Richard P. Feynman” —
“Is this, then, true or mere vain fantasy?
— Euripedes, Ion (circa 410 B.C.)” —
— Euripedes, Ion (circa 410 B.C.)” —
“Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but… for everything that is given something is taken.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance, Essays [First Series] (1841)” —
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance, Essays [First Series] (1841)” —
“To realize in its completeness the universal beauty and perfection of the works of God, we must recognize a certain perpetual and very free progress of the whole universe… There always remain in the abyss of things slumbering parts which have yet to be awakened.
— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, On the Ultimate Origination of Things (1697)” —
— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, On the Ultimate Origination of Things (1697)” —
“Everything morally right derives from one of four sources: it concerns either full perception of intelligent development of what is true; or the preservation of organized society, where every man is rendered his due and all obligations are faithfully discharged; or the greatness and strength of a noble, invincible spirit; or order and moderation in everything said and done, whereby is temperance and self control.
— Cicero, De Officiis, I, 5 (45-44 B.C.)” —
— Cicero, De Officiis, I, 5 (45-44 B.C.)” —
“Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in Either-Ors, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities. When forced to recognize that the extremes cannot be acted upon, it is still inclined to hold that they are all right in theory, but that when it comes to practical matters circumstances compel us to compromise.
— John Dewey, Experience and Education, I (1938)” —
— John Dewey, Experience and Education, I (1938)” —
“I am not a pessimist. To perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism.
— Roberto Rossellini” —
— Roberto Rossellini” —
“The first day or so, we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day, we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth.
— Prince Sultan Bin Salmon Al-Saud, Saudi Arabian astronaut” —
— Prince Sultan Bin Salmon Al-Saud, Saudi Arabian astronaut” —
“Plainly nobody will be afraid who believes nothing can happen to him… Fear is felt by those who believe something is likely to happen to them… People do not believe this when they are, or think they are, in the midst of great prosperity, and are in consequence insolent, contemptuous, and reckless… But if they are to feel the anguish of uncertainty, there must be some faint expectation of escape.
— Aristotle, Rhetoric, 382 B.C.” —
— Aristotle, Rhetoric, 382 B.C.” —
“It takes courage to be afraid.
— Montaigne, Essays, III, 6 (1588)” —
— Montaigne, Essays, III, 6 (1588)” —
“What a wonderful and amazing scheme we have here of the magnificent vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths…!
— Christian Huygens, New Conjectures Concerning the Planetary Worlds, Their Inhabitants, and Productions (circa 1670)” —
— Christian Huygens, New Conjectures Concerning the Planetary Worlds, Their Inhabitants, and Productions (circa 1670)” —
“When you are risen on the eastern horizon,
You have filled every land with your beauty…
Though you are far away, your rays are on Earth.
— Akhnaton, Hymn to the Sun (circa 1370 B.C.)” —
You have filled every land with your beauty…
Though you are far away, your rays are on Earth.
— Akhnaton, Hymn to the Sun (circa 1370 B.C.)” —
“Common sense is very uncommon.
— Horace Greeley” —
— Horace Greeley” —
“Man became civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
— H.L. Mencken” —
— H.L. Mencken” —
“He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; and he that dares not reason is a slave.
— William Drummond” —
— William Drummond” —
“It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.
— John Burroughs” —
— John Burroughs” —
“I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.
— Josh Billings” —
— Josh Billings” —
“The mind is like the stomach. It is not how much you put into it that counts, but how much it digests.
— Albert Jay Nock” —
— Albert Jay Nock” —
“All is mystery; but he is a slave who will not struggle to penetrate the dark veil.
— Benjamin Disraeli” —
— Benjamin Disraeli” —
“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.
— Voltaire” —
— Voltaire” —
“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
— Samuel Johnson” —
— Samuel Johnson” —
