Quotes
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.
