Difference between revisions of "Quotes"

Revision as of 20:04, 27 January 2020

It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original. https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Brin

When a wise man does not understand, he says: "I do not understand." The fool and the uncultured are ashamed of their ignorance. They remain silent when a question could bring them wisdom. Frank Herbert (8 October 1920 – 11 February 1986) was an American science-fiction writer.

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert

People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who know we don't. Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ: Did you really say that?. Retrieved on 2007-11-15.

If you think it's simple, then you have misunderstood the problem. Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ: Did you really say that?. Retrieved on 2007-11-15.

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bjarne_Stroustrup#/random

The great success of this system is that it makes the general public afraid of taking responsibility, afraid of taking a position or giving a definite answer, or even of making mistakes.

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ai_Weiwei#/random

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. The Four-Gated City (1969)

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Doris_Lessing

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use. "The Will to Believe" p. 10

Out of my experience, such as it is (and it is limited enough) one fixed conclusion dogmatically emerges, and that is this, that we with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves. … But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. Just so there is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea or reservoir. "Confidences of a 'Psychical Researcher'", in The American Magazine, Vol. 68 (1909), p. 589

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_James#/random

I think people in power have a vested interest to oppose critical thinking. Carl Sagan: 'Science Is a Way of Thinking', Science Friday interview from May 1996, 27 December 2013

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan

Creating is always so much more stimulating than destroying. p. 107 (Vintage 2003)

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Saramago

The very reason [the Greeks] got so far is that they knew how to pick up the spear and throw it onward from the point where others had left it. Their skill in the art of fruitful learning was admirable. We ought to be learning from our neighbors precisely as the Greeks learned from theirs, not for the sake of learned pedantry but rather using everything we learn as a foothold which will take us up as high, and higher, than our neighbor. Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, Marianne Cowan trans., p. 30

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pedantry#/random

"In truth," says Machiavelli, "there has never been, in any country, an extraordinary legislator who has not had recourse to God; for otherwise his laws would not have been accepted: there are, in fact, many useful truths of which a wise man may have knowledge without their having in themselves such clear reasons for their being so as to be able to convince others".

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Social_Contract#/random

Believing in an idea is dangerous! Because belief is absolute, and absolute, is unconditional, it is supreme, its ultimate and therefore fixed, which by definition will never be acceptable to change.' Belief. www.blogspot.com.

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joshua_Fernandez#/random

He whose honor is rooted in popular approval must, day by day, anxiously strive, act, and scheme in order to retain his reputation. For the populace is variable and inconstant, so that, if a reputation be not kept up, it quickly withers away. Everyone wishes to catch popular applause for himself, and readily represses the fame of others. The object of the strife being estimated as the greatest of all goods, each combatant is seized with a fierce desire to put down his rivals in every possible way, till he who at last comes out victorious is more proud of having done harm to others than of having done good to himself. This sort of honor, then, is really empty, being nothing. ~ Baruch Spinoza ~ in ~ Ethics ~

Quote of the day wikiquote.com

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza

And leaving the most powerful of weapons — thought and its expression — which move the world, each man employs the weapon of social activity, not noticing that every social activity is based on the very foundations against which he is bound to fight, and that upon entering the social activity which exists in our world every man is obliged, if only in part, to deviate from the truth and to make concessions which destroy the force of the powerful weapon which should assist him in the struggle. It is as if a man, who was given a blade so marvelously keen that it would sever anything, should use its edge for driving in nails.

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy#

In the upper, rich, more educated classes of European society doubt arose as to the truth of that understanding of life which was expressed by Church Christianity. When, after the Crusades and the maximum development of papal power and its abuses, people of the rich classes became acquainted with the wisdom of the classics and saw, on the one hand, the reasonable lucidity of the teachings of the ancient sages, and on the other hand, the incompatibility of the Church doctrine with the teaching of Christ, they found it impossible to continue to believe the Church teaching.

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy#

I know that most men — not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems — can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty — conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy#

Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired... Letter to a Young Clergyman (January 9, 1720), on proving Christianity to unbelievers

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jonathan_Swift

This evil fortune, which generally attends extraordinary men in the management of great affairs, has been imputed to divers causes, that need not be here set down, when so obvious a one occurs, if what a certain writer observes be true, that when a great genius appears in the world the dunces are all in confederacy against him. Essay on the Fates of Clergymen (1728)

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jonathan_Swift

Living virtuously is equal to living in accordance with one's experience of the actual course of nature As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, vii. 182.

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Chrysippus#/random

Wise people are in want of nothing, and yet need many things. On the other hand, nothing is needed by fools, for they do not understand how to use anything, but are in want of everything. As quoted in Moral Epistles by Seneca, iii. 10.

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Chrysippus#/random

He who is running a race ought to endeavor and strive to the utmost of his ability to come off victor; but it is utterly wrong for him to trip up his competitor, or to push him aside. So in life it is not unfair for one to seek for himself what may accrue to his benefit; but it is not right to take it from another. As quoted in De Officiis by Cicero, iii. 10.

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Chrysippus#/random

Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth. Nero Wolfe, chapter 11

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nero_Wolfe#Too_Many_Cooks

Never was there less of national feeling among the higher orders than during the reign of Charles the Second. That Prince, on the one side, thought it better to be the deputy of an absolute king than the King of a free people. Algernon Sidney, on the other hand, would gladly have aided France in all her ambitious schemes, and have seen England reduced to the condition of a province, in the wild hope that a foreign despot would assist him to establish his darling republic.[17]

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algernon_Sidney

In Jacques Ellul: A Systemic Exposition Darrell J. Fasching claimed Ellul believed "That which desacralizes a given reality, itself in turn becomes the new sacred reality".[11]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Ellul

The task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees. As quoted in Problems of Life (1952), by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, as reported in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) edited by Alan L. Mackay, p. 219

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger#/random

When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and makes one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return, and that this is not natural to them merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them. Letter to London merchant Peter Collinson (9 May 1753); reported in Labaree: "Papers of Benjamin Franklin", vol 4, pp 481-482.

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#/random

From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter 8 (1513).

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fear#/random

Cubism is no different from any other school of painting. The same principles and the same elements are common to all. The fact that for a long time cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it, means nothing. I do not read English, and an English book is a blank to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist, and why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about? p. 319.

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

A knowledge of different literatures is the best way to free one's self from the tyranny of any of them. On Oscar Wilde (1882)

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Mart%C3%AD