Is there an ultimate ‘Truth’?

"Whenever a value judgment is claimed to be ‘true’ there is (isn’t there?) a recipe for conflict: others will claim that the opposite is ‘true’ and the first assertion ‘false’. So how dangerous is it to use the word ‘true’ in relation to anything other than factual statements? Is there an ultimate ‘Truth’?"

A tourist of his own life

"His life was not centered around the place where he lived. His house was just one of many stopping places in a restless, unmoored existence, and this lack of center had the effect of turning him into a perpetual outsider, a tourist of his own life. You never had the feeling that he could be located."

Be ready for the unexpected

　　In searching out the truth be ready for the unexpected, for it is difficult to find and puzzling when you find it. 　　—Heraclitus

It doesn't contain a single idea

The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea.
Mortimer AdlerAdlerG

A turtle up on top of a fence post

Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.
Alex Haley

Cure for an obsession

Cure for an obsession: get another one.
Mason Cooley

To be content with much, impossible

To be content with little is hard; to be content with much, impossible.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

An addict of all normal pleasures

"He seemed an addict of all normal pleasures without being their slave."

All physics is wrong

“All physics is wrong, except where it isn’t"
~ Fermilab’s Boris Kayser

The more things change

The more things change, the more they are the same.
Alphonse Karr

The Scourge of God

"Soon Pauli was corresponding with leading physicists throughout Europe. His letters, signed jokingly “The Scourge of God,” were known for wit and sarcasm as well as scathing criticism. Colleagues reported that he uttered the phrase “Not only is it not right, it is not even wrong” to disparage theories that were seen to lack rigor and testable hypotheses. On one occasion, after Einstein gave a lecture on relativity in Berlin, while senior professors in the audience sat in silence wondering who should ask the first question, the brazen Pauli got up and announced, “What Professor Einstein has just said is not really as stupid as it may have sounded.” On another occasion, he made so many critical remarks about a lecture given by Paul Ehrenfest, a Dutch physicist twenty years his senior, that Ehrenfest told him, “I think I like your publications better than I like you.” Pauli snapped back, “That’s strange. My feeling about you is just the opposite.” The two became friends, and continued to try to one-up each other’s quips. Pauli’s outspoken manner did not endear him to everyone, but he earned the respect of many of his colleagues not just for his brilliance but also for his honesty and forthrightness. Many of them saw him as the “conscience of physics,” and often asked, “What does Pauli think?” when they were presented with a new idea."

Presentism

"Each of us is trapped in a place, a time, and a circumstance, and our attempts to use our minds to transcend those boundaries are, more often than not, ineffective. Like the sponge, we think we are thinking outside the box only because we can’t see how big the box really is. Imagination cannot easily transcend the boundaries of the present, and one reason for this is that it must borrow machinery that is owned by perception. The fact that these two processes must run on the same platform means that we are sometimes confused about which one is running. We assume that what we feel as we imagine the future is what we’ll feel when we get there, but in fact, what we feel as we imagine the future is often a response to what’s happening in the present. "

Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport

“And yet not cloy thy lips with loathed satiety, 　　
But rather famish them amid their plenty, 　　
Making them red and pale with fresh variety— 　　
Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty. 　　
A summer’s day will seem an hour but short, 　　
Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport.” 　　
~ Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis

Are we a computer simulation

　"In the future it is likely that our civilization will reach a level of technology such that it can create incredibly sophisticated computer simulations of human minds and of worlds for those minds to inhabit. Relatively tiny resources will be needed to sustain such simulated worlds – a single laptop of the future could be home to thousands or millions of simulated minds – so in all probability simulated minds will vastly outnumber biological ones. The experiences of both biological and simulated minds will be indistinguishable and both will of course think that they are not simulated, but the latter (who will make up the vast majority of minds) will in fact be mistaken. We naturally couch this argument in terms of hypotheticals about the future, but who is to say that this ‘future’ hasn’t already happened – that such computer expertise has not already been attained and such minds already simulated? We of course suppose that we are not computer-simulated minds living in a simulated world, but that may be a tribute to the quality of the programming."

The Neutrino people

"The cast of historical characters associated with neutrinos included the sharp-witted Wolfgang Pauli, who invoked these particles in the first place to dodge a crisis in physics; the troubled genius Ettore Majorana, who theorized about neutrinos’ mirror twins before disappearing without a trace at the age of thirty-two; and the committed socialist Bruno Pontecorvo, who realized that neutrinos might morph between different types and caused a Cold War ruckus by defecting to the Soviet Union."

Inventing Neutrinos

　　"It was in this heady atmosphere that the neutrino was invented, or willed into existence, in a form of scientific witchcraft to dodge a growing crisis in nuclear physics, long before the presence of such a particle was detected through experiments. When scientists couldn’t account for energy that went missing during radioactive beta decay, one theorist found it necessary to “invent” a new particle to account for the missing energy. The man behind the theoretical wizardry was a brash young physicist by the name of Wolfgang Pauli. "

Intellectual elite of Vienna

　　"It was Pauli’s tutor who introduced him to Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Few physicists understood the elegant but radical theory or grasped its profound implications at the time. Pauli, however, had no trouble diving in. Barely two months out of high school, he wrote a paper of his own on the subject. Determined to pursue a career in physics, he moved to Munich in 1918 to study under Arnold Sommerfeld, a pioneer in the emerging field of quantum mechanics. Pauli’s paper, which had even come to Einstein’s attention, impressed Sommerfeld, who wrote to a colleague about it, noting, “I have around me a really astonishing specimen of the intellectual elite of Vienna in the young Pauli … a first-year student!”"

“Well, you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers.”

"Years after the discovery, Reines confronted the theorist Hans Bethe, who had asserted in his 1934 paper with Rudolf Peierls that “there is no practically possible way of observing the neutrino.” Bethe responded with good humor: “Well, you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers.”"

A scientist is always a detective

“A detective is not always a scientist, but a scientist is always a detective.”

The Pope

"Fermi’s colleagues referred to him as “the Pope” because he was a natural leader and seemed infallible."

Mathematics is metaphysical

　　‘Mathematics has not a foot to stand upon which is not purely metaphysical.’
~ Thomas De Quincey, 1830

The toothpaste discount coupons

"People who don’t worry about whether their mutual-fund manager is keeping 0.5 or 0.6 percent of their investment will nonetheless spend hours scouring the Sunday paper for a coupon that gives them 40 percent off a tube of toothpaste "

Starting points matter

"If you asked a child to count upward from zero and another child to count downward from a million, you could be pretty sure that when they finally got exhausted, gave up, and went off in search of eggs to throw at your garage door, they would have reached very different numbers. Starting points matter because we often end up close to where we started."

Variety kills pleasure

" When they measured the volunteers’ satisfaction over the course of the study, they found that volunteers in the no-variety group were more satisfied than were volunteers in the variety group. In other words, variety made people less happy, not more. "

Price of hating

The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.
Eldridge Cleaver

The things that are not

O hateful Error, Melancholy’s child, 　　
Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men 　　
The things that are not? 　　
~ Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

The poets pen

And as imagination bodies forth 　　
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen 　　
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 　　
A local habitation and a name. 　　
Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Pleasure standard

“Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?”
~ Plato

Reading is a significant experience

"Literary reading revitalizes personal experience by revealing that what appeared so drab and dreary was in fact mysterious and extraordinary – and it provides new experience by communicating life in a way that feels as though it has actually been lived. And not only does it renew past experience, its urgent command to pay attention, like the Buddhist concept of mindfulness, makes the present incomparably richer. And reading, though solitary, does not imply a rejection of others. Again, detachment, paradoxically, brings deeper engagement. Reading increases empathy, and therefore compassion and patience, by inspiring understanding for unsympathetic and even atrocious characters. And it creates a new network of intimate friends, the writers. Finally, last but by no means least, reading is itself a significant experience."

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.”
~ John Stuart Mill

ask your heart what it doth know

　　Go to your bosom;

　　Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

　　Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Happiness is happiness

"The poet Alexander Pope devoted about a quarter of his Essay on Man to the topic of happiness, and concluded with this question: “Who thus define it, say they more or less / Than this, that happiness is happiness?"

Writing about music

"The musician Frank Zappa is reputed to have said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture "

Happiness is bitter

But, O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness 　　through another man’s eyes!
~ Shakespeare, As You Like It

Illusion of control

"Why isn’t it fun to watch a videotape of last night’s football game even when we don’t know who won? Because the fact that the game has already been played precludes the possibility that our cheering will somehow penetrate the television, travel through the cable system, find its way to the stadium, and influence the trajectory of the ball as it hurtles toward the goalposts! Perhaps the strangest thing about this illusion of control is not that it happens but that it seems to confer many of the psychological benefits of genuine control."

Workplace is the new village

"The secret of successful religions is benign paternalism. In return for surrender of freedom, the religion provides the appearance of loving care and the ability to satisfy all needs. So the corporations have become self-contained worlds with their own shops, cafés, bars, restaurants, gyms, hairdressers, massage rooms and medical facilities. The workplace is the new village, a community offering not merely employment and status but all essential services, a rich, varied social life and fun, fun, fun, fun."

The poor groaning ‘relationship’

"There is also the problem that, in contemporary cities, the couple relationship may be the only source of connection, structure, meaning and enchantment. In traditional societies there were religions to confer meaning and magic, rituals to structure the year, communities to offer strong connections and extended families to provide support. Now the poor groaning ‘relationship’ has to provide all of this, to take upon its weakened back the entire burden of living. No wonder it collapses under the strain."

Forestalling pleasure

"Forestalling pleasure is an inventive technique for getting double the juice from half the fruit."

Unresonable representations

It is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another, as it is to represent anything that really exists by that which exists not. - DANIEL DEFOE

Dysfunctional Consumer

　　I have become dysfunctional as a consumer. When I go to a mall, for example, I don’t buy things; instead, I look around me and am astonished by all the things for sale that I not only don’t need but can’t imagine myself wanting. My only entertainment at a mall is to watch the other mall-goers. Most of them, I suspect, come to the mall not because there is something specific that they need to buy. Rather, they come in the hope that doing so will trigger a desire for something that, before going to the mall, they didn’t want. It might be a desire for a cashmere sweater, a set of socket wrenches, or the latest cell phone. 　　Why go out of their way to trigger a desire? Because if they trigger one, they can enjoy the rush that comes when they extinguish that desire by buying its object. It is a rush, of course, that has as little to do with their long-term happiness as taking a hit of heroin has to do with the long-term happiness of a heroin addict.

Invisibility of death

"But now, in the city, death is invisible. There no cortèges, no notices, no mention, no ‘remains’. Years can go by without even a trace of death. It is like the flourishing city rats – always close but never mentioned, much less seen. There are no wakes – and, in secular cremation services, most of the mourners never see the corpse or coffin, much less the cremation. It is like a retirement-from-work party but without the retired employee."

You are the books you read

You are the books you read, the films you watch, the music you listen to, the
people you meet, the dreams you have, the conversations you engage in. You are
what you take from these. You are the sound of the ocean, the breath of fresh
air, the brightest light and the darkest corner.
You are a collective of every experience you have had in your life. You are every
single second of every single day. So drown yourself in a sea of knowledge and
existence. Let the words run through your veins and let the colors fill your mind
until there is nothing left to do but explode. There are no wrong answers.
Inspiration is everything. Sit back, relax, and take it all in.
Now, go out and create something.
Jac Vanek

Is there something wrong with them?

"How can this happen? Shouldn’t we know the tastes, preferences, needs, and desires of the people we will be next year—or at least later this afternoon? Shouldn’t we understand our future selves well enough to shape their lives—to find careers and lovers whom they will cherish, to buy slipcovers for the sofa that they will treasure for years to come? So why do they end up with attics and lives that are full of stuff that we considered indispensable and that they consider painful, embarrassing, or useless? Why do they criticize our choice of romantic partners, second-guess our strategies for professional advancement, and pay good money to remove the tattoos that we paid good money to get? Why do they experience regret and relief when they think about us, rather than pride and appreciation? We might understand all this if we had neglected them, ignored them, mistreated them in some fundamental way—but damn it, we gave them the best years of our lives! How can they be disappointed when we accomplish our coveted goals, and why are they so damned giddy when they end up in precisely the spot that we worked so hard to steer them clear of?
Is there something wrong with them?
Or is there something wrong with us?"

Wrong life cannot be lived rightly

“wrong life cannot be lived rightly,”

Thinker's pigeonhole

"Any “ism” invariably pigeonholes a thinker, neatly packaging him up to be sold in the market like a bar of soap."

What is education?

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
B. F. Skinner

Philosophical Novels

“A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images. But the philosophy need only spill over into the characters and action for it to stick out like a sore thumb, the plot to lose its authenticity, and the novel its life”

He has not lived long

" So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long."

You are dying prematurely

"How many have plundered your life when you were unaware of your losses; how much you have lost through groundless sorrow, foolish joy, greedy desire, the seductions of society; how little of your own was left: to you. You will realize that you are dying prematurely.' "

Will to meaning

"Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a "secondary rationalization" of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning."

How much suffering there is to get through

Rilke : "Wie viel ist aufzuleiden!" (How much suffering there is to get through!)

The wider cycles of life and death

"Long ago we had passed the stage of asking what was the meaning of life, a naive query which understands life as the attaining of some aim through the active creation of something of value. For us, the meaning of life embraced the wider cycles of life and death, of suffering and of dying."

In suffering he is unique

"When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden."

Nothing is worth doing pointlessly

Marcus Aurelius: “Nothing is worth doing pointlessly.”

A super natural high

There is something delightful, even orgasmic, in the process of thinking and truth-seeking. There is a certain dimension of sweetness, a“super”but“natural”high, call it a super natural high, found in actually feeling one’s thoughts grow and enlarge until they are born.
~ Robert Badra

The eye of science

The real world is increasingly seen to be, not the tidy garden of our race’s childhood, but the extraordinary, extravagant universe described by the eye of science.
~ Herman J. Muller

The goal of the synoptic empiricist

"The goal of the synoptic empiricist is not to collect bits and pieces, but to weave the strands of knowledge into a glowing tapestry."

6/7 of treason

Reason is 6/7 of treason.
James Thurber

Discover the power and the feelings of not-doing

“Everything I have taught you so far has been an aspect of notdoing,”Don Juan went on. “A warrior applies not-doing to everything in the world, and yet I can’t tell you more about it than what I have said today. You must let your own body discover the power and the feelings of not-doing.”
~ Carlos Castaneda - Journey to Ixtlan

Whether the water is warm or cold

Confucius : “One can tell for oneself whether the water is warm or cold.”

I am full of cracks

“I’m full of cracks, and leak out on all sides.”

A species of dogmatism

One can be positive of one’s own way that it leads to the goal and not that others cannot. That would be a species of dogmatism.
~ T. R. V. Murti

He has merely comprehended himself

When a speculative philosopher believes he has comprehended the world once and for all in his system, he is deceiving himself; he has merely comprehended himself and then naively projected that view upon the world.
~ C. G. Jung

He who knows does not speak

He who knows does not speak;
He who speaks does not know.
Tao Te Ching

Every act of knowledge develops the learner

Learning is not the accumulation of scraps of knowledge. It is a growth, where every act of knowledge develops the learner.
~ Edmund Husserl

And he wants to understand it

 “This attempt stands without rival as the most audacious enterprise in which the mind of man has ever engaged. Just reflect for a moment: Here is man, surrounded by the vastness of a universe in which he is only a tiny and perhaps insignificant part—and he wants to understand it.”
~ William Halverson

In our infinite ignorance we are all equal

I believe that it would be worth trying to learn something about the world even if in trying to do so we should merely learn that we do not know much . . . It might be well for all of us to remember that, while differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.
~ Karl Popper - Conjectures and Refutations (1963)

Progress from misconception to ever better (less mistaken) misconception

"The desirable future is one where we progress from misconception to ever better (less mistaken) misconception. The nature of science would be better understood if we called theories ‘misconceptions’ from the outset, instead of only after we have discovered their successors. Thus we could say that Einstein’s Misconception of Gravity was an improvement on Newton’s Misconception, which was an improvement on Kepler’s. The neo-Darwinian Misconception of Evolution is an improvement on Darwin’s Misconception, and his on Lamarck’s. If people thought of it like that, perhaps no one would need to be reminded that science claims neither infallibility nor finality."

The height of injustice is to seem just without being so

The height of injustice is to seem just without being so.
~ Plato

The pursuit of money should come last in the scale of value

The pursuit of money should come last in the scale of value.
~ Plato

To understand Plato is to be educated

To understand Plato is to be educated.
~ Edith Hamilton

Plato advised drunken people to look into a mirror

Plato advised drunken people to look into a mirror.
~ Diogenes Laërtius

To find out where the truth is

I think a man’s duty is … to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to dis- prove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life.
~ Plato

The greatest happiness of the whole

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.
~ Plato

Astronomy compels the soul to look upward

Astronomy compels the soul to look upward and leads us from this world to another.
~ Plato

The feeling of wonder is the touchstone of the philosopher

The feeling of wonder is the touchstone of the philosopher, and all philosophy has its origins in wonder.
~ Plato

I never saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument

I never saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude, and shooting one another.
~ Thomas Jefferson

This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense

At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly contradictory attitudes—an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.
~ Carl Sagan

Tthe discovery that we are profoundly ignorant

The greatest single achievement of science in this most scientifically productive of centuries is the discovery that we are profoundly ignorant; we know very little about nature and understand even less.
~ Lewis Thomas

To believe upon insufficient evidence

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone to believe upon insufficient evidence.
~ W. K. Clifford (nineteenth-century mathematician)

The philosophy of the cancer cell

‘Growth for the sake of growth is the philosophy of the cancer cell.’
~ Edward Abbey

In the regime of the city

‘If a man were to under- take a systematic enquiry to find out what is most destructive of friendship and most productive of enmity, he would find it in the regime of the city.’
~ Philodemus of Gadara

Wider ‘networks’ of friends and friendship

While unable to put our suspicions to rest and stop sniffing out treachery and fearing frustration, we seek – compulsively and passionately – wider ‘networks’ of friends and friendship; indeed, as wide a ‘network’ as we can manage to squeeze into the mobile phone directory that, obligingly, grows more capacious with every new generation of mobiles.
~ Zygmunt Bauman - Liquid Fear

A becoming other of the self

‘The friend is not another I but an otherness immanent in selfness, a becoming other of the self.’
~ Giorgio Agamben

In loving their friend they love what is good for themselves

‘In loving their friend they love what is good for themselves. For the good person, in becoming a friend, becomes a good for the person to whom they become a friend.’
~ Aristotle

We will look foolish, for though we are friends...

‘We will look foolish, for though we are friends, we have not been able to say what friendship is.’
~ Socrates’ conclusion in Plato’s dialogue on friendship, the Lysis

A gift is something that you cannot be thankful for

‘A gift is something that you cannot be thankful for.’
~ Jacques Derrida

‘Love is the difficult realisation that...

‘Love is the difficult realisation that some-thing other than oneself is real.’
~ Iris Murdoch

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live

‘Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.’
~ Oscar Wilde

The sadist doesn't create a masochist; he finds him readymade

"Do we wonder why one of man's chief characteristics is his tortured dissatisfaction with himself, his constant self-criticism? It is the only way he has to overcome the sense of hopeless limitation inherent in his real situation. Dictators, revivalists, and sadists know that people like to be lashed with accusations of their own basic unworthiness because it reflects how they truly feel about themselves. The sadist doesn't create a masochist; he finds him readymade. Thus people are offered one way of overcoming unworthiness: the chance to idealize the self, to lift it onto truly heroic levels. In this way man sets up the complementary dialogue with himself that is natural to his condition. He criticizes himself because he falls short of the heroic ideals he needs to meet in order to be a really imposing creation."

It creates precisely the isolation that one can't stand

"Man thus has the absolute tension of the dualism. Individuation means that the human creature has to oppose itself to the rest of nature. It creates precisely the isolation that one can't stand—and yet needs in order to develop distinctively. It creates the difference that becomes such a burden; it accents the smallness of oneself and the sticking-outness at the same time. This is natural guilt. The person experiences this as "unworthiness" or "badness" and dumb inner dissatisfaction. And the reason is realistic. Compared to the rest of nature man is not a very satisfactory creation. He is riddled with fear and powerlessness."

All the tears and all the tearing is after all for oneself

"This aspect of group psychology explains something that otherwise staggers our imagination: have we been astonished by fantastic displays of grief on the part of whole peoples when one of their leaders dies? The uncontrolled emotional outpouring, the dazed masses standing huddled in the; city squares sometimes for days on end, grown people groveling hysterically and tearing at themselves, being trampled in the surge toward the coffin or funeral pyre— how to make sense out of such a massive, neurotic "vaudeville of despair"? In one way only: it shows a profound state of shock at losing one's bulwark against death. The people apprehend, at some dumb level of their personality: "Our locus of power to control life and death can himself die; therefore our own immortality is in doubt." All the tears and all the tearing is after all for oneself, not for the passing of a great soul but for one's own imminent passing. Immediately men begin to rename city streets, squares, airports with the name of the dead man: it is as though to declare that he will be immortalized physically in the society, in spite of his own physical death."

Collective eternity impulse

"Every group, however small or great, has, as such, an "individual" impulse for eternalization, which manifests itself in the creation of and care for national, religious, and artistic heroes . . . the individual paves the way for this collective eternity impulse. . ."

The urge to deification of the other

"The urge to deification of the other, the constant placing of certain select persons on pedestals, the reading into them of extra powers: the more they have, the more rubs off on us. We participate in their immortality, and so we create immortals."

Each person maintains his own arrogant point of view

In his ignorance of the whole truth, each person maintains his own arrogant point of view.
~ The Buddha

What the truth ought to be

You will never succeed in getting at the truth if you think you know, ahead of time, what the truth ought to be.
~ Marchette Chute

Facts are the raw material for thinking

Facts are the raw material for thinking.
~ Robert E. Sparks

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens out of the widest vistas.… No one of us can get along without the far-flashing beams of light it sends over the world’s perspectives.
~ William James

Talk passes the time away

Men talk because men have the capacity for speech, just as monkeys have the capacity for swinging by their tails. For philosophers, as for other human caddis flies, talk passes the time away that would otherwise hang like a millstone about a man’s neck. Tellurians in general, and philosophers in particular, swing from day to day by their long prehensile tongues, and are finally hurled headlong into their silent tombs or flaming furnaces.
~ Herman Tennessen

Mind invents logic for the whims of the will

We do not want a thing because we reason; we find reasons for a thing because we want it. Mind invents logic for the whims of the will.
~ G. W. F. Hegel

People use their leaders almost as an excuse

"I think this characterization is beautifully apt to describe the timid "heroisms" of group behavior. There is nothing free or manly about them. Even when one merges his ego with the authoritarian father, the "spell" is in his own narrow interests. People use their leaders almost as an excuse. When they give in to the leader's commands they can always reserve the feeling that these commands are alien to them, that they are the leader's responsibility, that the terrible acts they are committing are in his name and not theirs. This, then, is another thing that makes people feel so guiltless, as Canetti points out: they can imagine themselves as temporary victims of the leader. The more they give in to his spell, and the more terrible the crimes they commit, the more they can feel that the wrongs are not natural to them. It is all so neat, this usage of the leader; it reminds us of James Frazer's discovery that in the remote past tribes often used their kings as scapegoats who, when they no longer served the people's needs, were put to death. These are the many ways in which men can play the hero, all the while that they are avoiding responsibility for their own acts in a cowardly way."

The leader is as much a creature of the group as they of him

"The leader is as much a creature of the group as they of him and that he loses his "individual distinctiveness" by being a leader, as they do by being followers. He has no more freedom to be himself than any other member of the group, precisely because he has to be a reflex of their assumptions in order to qualify for leadership in the first place."

Holy aggression

"Freud saw that the leader wipes out fear and permits everyone to feel omnipotent. Redl refined this somewhat by showing how important the leader often was by the simple fact that it was he who performed the "initiatory act" when no one else had the daring to do it. Redl calls this beautifully the "magic of the initiatory act." This initiatory act can be anything from swearing to sex or murder. As Redl points out, according to its logic only the one who first commits murder is the murderer; all others are followers. Freud has said in Totem and Taboo that acts that are illegal for the individual can be justified if the whole group shares responsibility for them. But they can be justified in another way: the one who initiates the act takes upon himself both the risk and the guilt. The result is truly magic: each member of the group can repeat the act without guilt. They are not responsible, only the leader is. Redl calls this, aptly, "priority magic." But it does something even more than relieve guilt: it actually transforms the fact of murder. This crucial point initiates us directly into the phenomenology of group transformation of the everyday world. If one murders without guilt, and in imitation of the hero who runs the risk, why then it is no longer murder: it is "holy aggression. For the first one it was not." In other words, participation in the group redistills everyday reality and gives it the aura of the sacred—just as, in childhood play created a heightened reality."

In the prison of the motherly racial-national-religious fixation

"The fear of emerging out of the family and into the world on one's own responsibility and powers; the desire to keep oneself tucked into a larger source of power. It is these things that make for the mystique of "group," "nation," "blood," "mother- or fatherland," and the like. These feelings are embedded in one's earliest experiences of comfortable merger with the mother. As Fromm put it, they keep one "in the prison of the motherly racial-national-religious fixation.""

The masses look to the leaders to give them just the untruth that they need

"By explaining the precise power that held groups together Freud could also show why groups did not fear danger. The members do not feel that they are alone with their own smallness and helplessness, as they have the powers of the hero-leader with whom they are identified. Natural narcissism — the feeling that the person next to you will die, but not you—is reinforced by trusting dependence on the leader's power. No wonder that hundreds of thousands of men marched up from trenches in the face of blistering gunfire in World War I. They were partially self-hypnotised, so to speak. No wonder men imagine victories against impossible odds: don't they have the omnipotent powers of the parental figure? Why are groups so blind and stupid?—men have always asked. Because they demand illusions, answered Freud, they "constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is real." And we know why. The real world is simply too terrible to admit: it tells man that he is a small, trembling animal who will decay and die. Illusion changes all this, makes man seem important, vital to the universe, immortal in some way. Who transmits this illusion, if not the parents by imparting the macro-lie of the cultural causa sui? The masses look to the leaders to give them just the untruth that they need; the leader continues the illusions and magnifies them into a truly heroic victory. Furthermore, he makes possible a new experience, the expression of forbidden impulses, secret wishes, and fantasies. In group behavior anything goes because the leader okays it. In the group each man seems an omnipotent hero who can give full vent to his appetites under the approving eye of the father."

"Longing for being hypnotized"

"It is not so much that man is a herd animal, said Freud, but that he is a horde animal led by a chief. It is this alone that can explain the "uncanny and coercive characteristics of group formations." The chief is a "dangerous personality, toward whom only a passive-masochistic attitude is possible, to whom one's will has to be surrendered,—while to be alone with him, 'to look him in the face,' appears a hazardous enterprise." This alone, says Freud, explains the "paralysis" that exists in the link between a person with inferior power to one of superior power. Man has "an extreme passion for authority" and "wishes to be governed by unrestricted force. It is this trait that the leader hypnotically embodies in his own masterful person. Or as Fenichel later put it, people have a "longing for being hypnotized" precisely because they want to get back to the magical protection, the participation in omnipotence, the "oceanic feeling" that they enjoyed when they were loved and protected ie by their parents. For Freud, this was the life force that held groups together. It functioned as a kind of psychic cement that locked people into mutual and mindless interdependence: the magnetic powers of the leader, reciprocated by the guilty delegation of everyone's will to him."

They simply became dependent children again

"Early theorists of group psychology had tried to explain why men were so sheep-like when they functioned in groups. They developed ideas like "mental contagion" and "herd instinct," which became very popular. But as Freud was quick to see, these ideas never really did explain what men did with their judgment and common sense when they got caught up in groups. Freud saw right away what they did with it: they simply became dependent children again, blindly following the inner voice of their parents, which now came to them under the hypnotic spell of the leader. They abandoned their egos to his, identified with his power, tried to function with him as an ideal."

The need to be subject to someone

"The need to be subject to someone remains: only the part of the father is transferred to teachers, superiors, impressive personalities; the submissive loyalty to rulers that is so wide-spread is also a transference of this sort."
~ Ferenczi

Must hide ... the ... truth.

. . . men, incapable of liberty— who cannot stand the terror of the sacred that manifests itself before their open eyes—must turn to mystery, must hide ... the ... truth.
—Carlo Levi

Mind is only a little bit of nature

"Now there is certainly something special about mind, so little is known about it and its relation to nature. I personally have a vast respect for mind, but has nature? Mind is only a little bit of nature, the rest of which seems to be able to get along very well without it. Will it really allow itself to be influenced to any great extent by regard for mind?"
~ Freud

Belief has to absorb man's basic terror

"Nature seems unconcerned, even viciously antagonistic to human meanings; and we fight by trying to bring our own dependable meanings into the world. But human meanings are fragile, ephemeral: they are constantly being discredited by historical events and natural calamities. One Hitler can efface centuries of scientific and religious meanings; one earthquake can negate a million times the meaning of a personal life. Mankind has reacted by trying to secure human meanings from beyond. Man's best efforts seem utterly fallible without appeal to something higher for justification, some conceptual support for the meaning of one's life from a transcendental dimension of some kind. As this belief has to absorb man's basic terror, it cannot be merely abstract but must be rooted in the emotions, in an inner feeling that one is secure in something stronger, larger, more important than one's own strength and life."

Coming from a logician, this surprise surprised me

Lord Russell tells us that he once received a letter from a well-known logician, a Mrs. Franklin, admitting that she was herself a solipsist and was surprised that no one else was. Russell comments: “Coming from a logician, this surprise surprised me.”
~ J. Miller

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.
~ Albert Camus

Or you shall learn nothing

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
~ T. H. Huxley

Philosopher and his students

The philosopher does sometimes get so interested in his technique that he forgets the human interest that may have first led him and his students to philosophy; the student suffers from impatience to get to the main point. Some philosophers are like pianists who play only scales; on the other hand some students are like beginners in music who are so anxious to play Beethoven that they resent having to learn scales.
~ Lewis White Beck

To watch a man who doesn’t know what to do with the incomprehensible

It is a terrible thing, Tolstoi said, to watch a man who doesn’t know what to do with the incomprehensible, because generally he winds up playing with a toy named God. Pasteur saw nothing particularly terrifying or unsatisfying about this situation, saying that the only thing to do in the face of the incomprehensible is to kneel before it. But that which is most incomprehensible of all is not a distant planet but the human mind it- self; kneeling under these circumstances may represent the ultimate vanity.
~ Norman Cousins

The major part of every meaningful life

The major part of every meaningful life is the solution of problems.
~ Paul Halmos

You must also be right

Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo it is not enough that you be persecuted by an unkind establishment, you must also be right.
~ Robert Park

An idea once born never dies

An idea once born never dies. It may grow feeble under the battering of other ideas. It may gather dust upon some library shelf. But sooner or later some- one is going to shake off that dust and look at the forgotten idea once again. And lo and behold! here precisely is what he has been searching for these many years.
~ T. K. Mahadevan

The crimes of nonconformity

The trial of Socrates represents something more than a mere historical event that could not possibly happen again. The trial of Socrates is a charge leveled at the type of intellectual questioning that seeks out the true problems lying outside everyday mediocrity. When Socrates tormented the Athenians like a gadfly, he prevented them from sleeping peacefully, from relaxing with their ready-made solutions to moral and social problems. By astonishing us, Socrates prevents us from thinking along the old lines that have been handed down to us and have become habits. Thus Socrates stands at the very opposite end of the scale from intellectual well-being, easy conscience, and beatific serenity. For all who think that the evidence of authority ought to prevail over the authority of evidence, that order and stability can-not permit the crimes of nonconformity and “lèse-société,” Socrates could only have been the enemy.
~ Jean Brun - Socrates

The unexamined life is not worth living

Men of Athens, I know and love you, but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of Philosophy.… I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.… I tell you that to do as you say would be a disobedience to God, and therefore I cannot hold my tongue. Daily to discourse about virtue, and about those other things about which you hear me examining myself and others is the greatest good of man. The unexamined life is not worth living.… In another world I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge.… In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions: assuredly not.
~ Plato - The Apology

Problems we cannot solve

The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems we cannot solve at the same level at which we created them.
~ Albert Einstein

All thought is anthropomorphic

Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal.… The truism “All thought is anthropomorphic” has no other meaning. Likewise, the mind that aims to understand reality can consider itself satisfied only by reducing it to terms of thought.
~ Albert Camus

When we are thinking we are not experiencing outside ourselves

Eastern and Western epistemology are united in reminding us that when we are thinking we are not experiencing outside ourselves.
~ William W. Blake

But the theory that shall interpret them is manmade

Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.… The sense-experiences are the given subject-matter. But the theory that shall interpret them is manmade.… hypothetical, never completely final, subject to question and doubt.
~ Albert Einstein

It is much easier to bury a problem than to solve it

It is much easier to bury a problem than to solve it.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away

“Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.”
 ~ Hermann Minkowski - In one of the first public lectures on special relativity,

He delights in it because it is beautiful

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. Of course I do not here speak of that beauty that strikes the senses, the beauty of qualities and appearances; not that I undervalue such beauty, far from it, but it has nothing to do with science; I mean that profounder beauty which comes from the harmonious order of the parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp.
~ Henri Poincaré

A collection of facts is no more a science

‘Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.’
~ Henri Poincaré

The great tragedy of Science

‘The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.’
~ Thomas Huxley

Nature isn’t that complicated

‘If you see a formula in the Physical Review that extends over a quarter of a page, forget it. It’s wrong. Nature isn’t that complicated.’
~ Berndt Matthias

The physicist in preparing for his work needs three things

‘The physicist in preparing for his work needs three things: mathematics, mathematics and mathematics.’
~ Wilhelm Röntgen

Physics is not a religion

Physics is not a religion. If it were, we’d have a much easier time raising money.
~ LEON LEDERMA

Living on Earth may be expensive

Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.
~ ANONYMOUS

I do not feel obliged to believe that

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
~ GALILEO GALILEI

Science must begin with myths

Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
~ KARL POPPER

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.
~ ALBERT EINSTEIN

Something that no one ever knew before

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.
~ PAUL DIRAC

The effort to understand the universe

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.
~ STEVEN WEINBERG

The cathedral will be more closely packed with sand than space is with stars

Place three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, and the cathedral will be more closely packed with sand than space is with stars.
~ JAMES JEANS

How deep is time?

How deep is time? How far down into the life of matter do we have to go before we understand what time is?
 —Don DeLillo, Underworld

Particles communicate with each other by way of invisible fields

"Everything that we can see and touch is made up of indivisible particles. These particles communicate with each other by way of invisible fields that permeate all of space the way air fills a room. Fields are not made of atoms; they have no smallest unit. The particles determine where the fields will be stronger or weaker, and the fields tell the particles how to move."

One sentence passed on to the next generation

If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis... that all things are made of atoms—tittle particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.
 —Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion

“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion”
~ Francis Bacon

There is not a philosophical method

There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Instead of knocking ourselves out trying to become popular

"Along these lines, Musonius observes, that the time and energy people expend on illicit love affairs far outweighs the time and energy it would take them, as practicing Stoics, to develop the self-control required to avoid such affairs. Musonius goes on to suggest that we would also be better off if, instead of working hard to become wealthy, we trained ourselves to be satisfied with what we have; if, instead of seeking fame, we overcame our craving for the admiration of others; if, instead of spending time scheming to harm someone we envy, we spent that time overcoming our feelings of envy; and if, instead of knocking ourselves out trying to become popular, we worked to maintain and improve our relationships with those we knew to be true friends."

“Let us go to Aricia then and dine.”

"When someone reported to Paconius that he was being tried in the Senate, Paconius was uninterested; he merely set off for his daily exercise and bath. When he was informed that he had been condemned, he asked whether it was to banishment or death. “To banishment,” came the reply. He then asked whether his property at Aricia had also been confiscated, and when he was told that it hadn’t, he replied, “Let us go to Aricia then and dine.”"

I shall despise riches

“I shall despise riches alike when I have them and when I have them not, being neither cast down if they shall lie elsewhere, nor puffed up if they shall glitter around me.”
~ Seneca

He who knows contentment

“He who knows contentment is rich.”
~ Lao Tzu

The truly rich man

“The man who adapts himself to his slender means and makes himself wealthy on a little sum, is the truly rich man.”
~ Seneca

Luxury uses her wit to promote vices

"Luxury, Seneca warns, uses her wit to promote vices: First she makes us want things that are inessential, then she makes us want things that are injurious. Before long, the mind becomes slave to the body’s whims and pleasures."

The most difficult of all pleasures to combat

“The pleasure connected with food is undoubtedly the most difficult of all pleasures to combat.”
~ Musonius

To desire so much when you can hold so little

"Is it not madness and the wildest lunacy to desire so much when you can hold so little?”
~ Seneca

Interrogations for which an answer must be sought

The things which exist around us, which we touch, see, hear and taste, are regarded as interrogations for which an answer must be sought.
~ John Dewey

Never accept a fact

Never accept a fact until it is verified by a theory!
~ Sir Arthur Eddington

The teacher’s obligation is to be patient

The teacher’s obligation is to be patient enough to permit deliberation and decision by each of those he is trying to help. If his students do not choose, each in the light of his own contingent existence and his own limitations, they will not become ethical beings; if they are not ethical beings—in search of their own ethical reality—they are not individuals; if they are not individuals, they will not learn.
~ Søren Kierkegaard - The Point of View

“Confusion” is an initial phase of all knowledge

“Confusion” is an initial phase of all knowledge, without which one cannot progress to clarity.The important thing for the individual who truly desires to think is that he not be overly hurried but be faithful at each step of his mental itinerary to the aspect of reality currently under view, that he strive to avoid disdain for the preliminary distant and con- fused aspects due to some snob sense of urgency impelling him to arrive immediately at the more refined conclusions.

~ José Ortega y Gasset - The Origin of Philosophy

What matters is to leave off crawling in the dust

Philosophy, as Plato and Aristotle said, begins in wonder. This wonder means a dim awareness of the useless talent, some sense that antlikeness is a betrayal.…

Philosophy means liberation from the two dimensions of routine, soaring above the well known, seeing it in new perspectives, arousing wonder and the wish to fly. Philosophy subverts man’s satisfaction with himself, exposes custom as a questionable dream, and offers not so much solutions as a different life.

A great deal of philosophy, including truly subtle and ingenious works, was not intended as an edifice for men to live in, safe from sun and wind, but as a challenge: don’t sleep on! there are so many vantage points; they change in flight: what matters is to leave off crawling in the dust.

~ Walter Kaufmann - Critique of Religion and Philosophy

We are bad men living among bad men

“We are bad men living among bad men, and only one thing can calm us—we must agree to go easy on one another.”
~ Seneca

Reason will never enlist the aid of reckless unbridled impulses

“Reason will never enlist the aid of reckless unbridled impulses over which it has no authority.”
~ Seneca

The desire for friendship comes quickly

‘The desire for friendship comes quickly. Friendship does not.’
~ Aristotle

The man who drinks in all that life offers

"The man who seeks to escape life drinks to get drunk, unlike the man who drinks in all that life offers in his search for wisdom."

But it does buy a more pleasant form of misery

‘Money can’t buy you happiness but it does buy a more pleasant form of misery.’
~ Spike Milligan

Freedom and slavery are mental states

‘Freedom and slavery are mental states.’
~ Gandhi

When you know all the answers

When you know all the answers, you haven’t asked all the questions.
~ Harold Levitt

History is the story of the defiance of the unknown

History is the story of the defiance of the unknown and of what happens when man tries to extend his reach. Such defiance is necessary because conventional wisdom has never been good enough to run a civilization.
~ Norman Cousins

One can’t believe impossible things

“There’s no use trying,” said Alice: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age I always did it for half an hour a day. Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
~ Lewis Carroll

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
~ Epictetus

Pythagoras was the first person who invented the term “Philosophy"

Pythagoras was the first person who invented the term “Philosophy,” and who called himself a philosopher.
~ Diogenes Laërtius

If the only tool you have is a hammer

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail.
~ Abraham Maslow

I’d rather be myself than be at the top

The General shook his head. “You’ve been out of school all these years, and what have you learned? Don’t you know raw ability will never take you to the top?”

“I’d rather be myself than be at the top,” said Beller. “I like to know what I think when I go to bed at night.”
~ Christopher Anvil

All philosophy begins with astonishment and wonder

All philosophy begins—as the ancient Greeks so well knew— with astonishment and wonder.
~ Kurt Reinhardt

Think or believe

It began when I was in the fifth grade. I came home from school one day, and my mother said to me, “What did you do in school today—think or believe?”
~ Ralph Nader

Men began to philosophize to escape ignorance

A sense of wonder started men philosophizing, in ancient times as well as today. Their wondering is aroused, first, by trivial matters; but they continue on from there to wonder about less mundane matters such as the changes of the moon, sun, and stars, and the beginnings of the universe. What is the result of this puzzlement? An awesome feeling of ignorance. Men began to philosophize, therefore, to escape ignorance.
~ Aristotle

This is the end of our comrade

“This is the end of our comrade a man, as we would say, of all then living we had ever met, the noblest and the wisest and the most just.”
~ Plato

Not to be worthy of my sufferings

"There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings."
~ Dostoevski

I myself know nothing

I myself know nothing, except just a little, enough to extract an argument from another man who is wise and to receive it fairly.
~ Socrates

While I am still in ignorance about my own nature

I’ve not yet succeeded in obeying the Delphic injunction to “know myself,” and it seems to me absurd to consider problems about other beings while I am still in ignorance about my own nature.
~ Socrates

Self-ignorance is a misfortune

Self-ignorance in any of its manifestations [is] a misfortune.
~ Socrates

Socrates prevents us from thinking along the old lines

When Socrates tormented the Athenians like a gadfly, he prevented them from sleeping peacefully, from relaxing with their ready-made solutions to moral and social problems. By astonishing us, Socrates prevents us from thinking along the old lines that have been handed down to us and have become habits.
~ Jean Brun

Are you not ashamed at heaping up the greatest amount of money

Are you not ashamed at heaping up the greatest amount of money and prestige and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all?
~ Socrates

I do the things that I hate

“I do the things that I hate.… I do not do the good things that I want to do; I do the wrong things that I do not want to do.”
~ Saint Paul

I was really too honest a man to be a politician

As a midwife, I attend men and not women, and I look after their souls when they are in labor, and not after their bodies; and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth. I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
~ Socrates

How many things I don’t need

“How many things I don’t need!”
~ Socrates

I ask questions of others but have not the wit to answer them myself

 “The reproach which is often made against me—that I ask questions of others but have not the wit to answer them myself—is very just. The reason is that god compels me to be a midwife, but forbids me to bring forth.”
~ Socrates

To be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
~ Krishnamurti

Just in order to become a child again

I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin a new.
~ Hermann Hesse - Siddhartha

A community of seekers

To my way of thinking, a college is a community of seekers—a community of those devoted not solely to the appreciation and preservation of the past, but dedicated to the discovery of greater truth. It is a community of those who do not believe that all truth has been found in any area—who refuse to invest any particular statement, book, creed, institution, or person with infallibility. It should be a community of those who are completely dedicated to the best that they know but believe that there is a better-to-be-known in all areas. Persons in such a community should be doubters and sceptics in the sense that they suspend judgment and question all assumptions and conclusions, so that each one will be forced to justify itself before the bar of critical analysis. Such attitudes are never apt to win friends or to influence people among that segment of society that believes that it has the truth.
~ Dr. Bert Williams

They can tolerate the ambiguous

Our healthy subjects are uniformly unthreatened and unfrightened by the unknown, being therein quite different from average men. They accept the unknown, they are comfortable with it, and often are even attracted by it. To use Frenkel-Brunswick’s phrase, “they can tolerate the ambiguous.” … Since for healthy people, the unknown is not frightening, they do not have to spend any time laying the ghost, whistling past the cemetery, or otherwise protecting them- selves against danger. They do not neglect the unknown, or deny it, or run away from it, or try to make believe it really is known, nor do they organize, dichotomize, or rubricize it prematurely. They do not cling to the familiar, nor is their quest for truth a catastrophic need for certainty, for safety, for definiteness, and order. The fully functioning personality can be, when the objective situation calls for it, comfortably disorderly, anarchic, vague, doubtful, uncertain, indefinite, approximate, inexact, or inaccurate.
~ Abraham Maslow

The salvation of man is through love and in love

"A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment."

When reality is more horrible than nightmares

"I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible night- mare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him."

A blow which does not even find its mark

"Strangely enough, a blow which does not even find its mark can, under certain circumstances, hurt more than one that finds its mark. Once I was standing on a railway track in a snowstorm. In spite of the weather our party had to keep on working. I worked quite hard at mending the track with gravel, since that was the only way to keep warm. For only one moment I paused to get my breath and to lean on my shovel. Unfortunately the guard turned around just then and thought I was loafing. The pain he caused me was not from any insults or any blows. That guard did not think it worth his while to say anything, not even a swear word, to the ragged, emaciated figure standing before him, which probably reminded him only vaguely of a human form. Instead, he playfully picked up a stone and threw it at me. That, to me, seemed the way to attract the attention of a beast, to call a domestic animal back to its job, a creature with which you have so little in common that you do not even punish it."

There are things which must cause you to lose your reason

"There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose."

I had to wrench myself out of me with forceps

"Inch by inch I conquered the inner terrain I was born with. Bit by bit I reclaimed the swamp in which I’d languished. I gave birth to my infinite being, but I had to wrench myself out of me with forceps."

Absolute conviction

Absolute conviction, whether about ourselves, about others, or about any belief, is at the root of all human evil.
~ Richard Moss, M.D.

The weight of undisputed authority

The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority.
~ Paul Tillich

When belief and its securities have to be left behind

 “Almost all the spiritual traditions recognize that there is a stage in man’s development when belief—in contrast to faith—and its securities have to be left behind.”
~ Alan Watts

Flight from insecurity

“Flight from insecurity is catastrophic to any kind of human growth. To flee from insecurity is to miss the whole point of being human.”
~ Peter Bertocci

A clean sweep of formerly held opinions

Some years ago I came to realize that from my youth onwards I had been accepting as true many opinions that were really false, and that consequently the beliefs which I based upon such infirm grounds must themselves be doubtful and uncertain. Thereupon I became convinced that I need to make, once in my life, a clean sweep of my formerly held opinions and to begin to rebuild from the bottom up, if I wished to establish some kind of firm and assured way of thinking in the sciences. Today then … I shall apply myself earnestly and freely to the task of eradicating all of my formerly held opinions. To this end it will not be necessary to show that the old opinions are false.… Rather, since my reason persuades me that I ought to withhold belief from whatever is not entirely certain and indubitable, quite as much as from what is manifestly false, I shall be sufficiently justified in rejecting any belief if only I can find in each case some reason to doubt it.
~ René Descartes - Meditations

Mind; which also sees what might be

How could the body’s eye, which sees only what is, ever match the mind’s, which also sees what might be?
~ Robert Kaplan/Ellen Kaplan

The confusion of faith with belief

The most ordinary misinterpretation of faith is to consider it an act of knowledge that has a low degree of evidence.… If this is meant, one is speaking of belief rather than of faith.… Almost all the struggles between faith and knowledge are rooted in the wrong understanding of faith as a type of knowledge which has a low degree of evidence but is supported by religious authority. One of the worst errors of theology and popular religion is to make statements which intentionally or unintentionally contradict the structure of reality. Such an attitude is an expression not of faith but of the confusion of faith with belief.
~ Paul Tillich

At that moment doubt, not belief, is the greater virtue

When identification with any idea about God sets our hearts and actions against other human beings whose conceptualizations are different from our own, at that moment doubt, not belief, is the greater virtue.
~ Richard Moss, M.D.

That is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed

“I have said some things of which I am not altogether confident. But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to inquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know—that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.”
~ Socrates

Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of toads

Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of toads to find the real prince.
~ Bumper sticker

By inquiry we discover the truth

 “For by doubting we come to inquiry, by inquiry we discover the truth.”
~ Peter Abelard (1079–1142)

Life is not a problem to be solved

Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.
~ Joseph Campbell

We have to live it awake

Dream or nightmare, we have to live our experience as it is, and we have to live it awake. We live in a world which is penetrated through and through by science and which is both whole and real. We cannot turn it into a game simply by taking sides.
—JACOB BRONOWSKI

The mainspring which has moved our civilization

The sanction of experienced fact as a face of truth is a profound subject, and the mainspring which has moved our civilization since the Renaissance.
—JACOB BRONOWSKI

Nirvana is nothingness

“Nirvana is nothingness.”
~ Christopher Hitchens

I’m just looking to find out more about the world

People say to me, “Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?” No, I’m not. I’m just looking to find out more about the world, and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law that explains everything, so be it. That would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it’s like an onion with millions of layers, and we’re sick and tired of looking at layers, then that’s the way it is . . . My interest in science is to simply find out more about the world, and the more I find out, the better it is. I like to find out.
~ Richard Feynman

A sharp mind that only destroys me

"Besides, what can I expect from myself? My sensations in all their horrible acuity, and a profound awareness of feeling… A sharp mind that only destroys me, and an unusual capacity for dreaming to keep me entertained… A dead will and a reflection that cradles it, like a living child…"

What is there to confess

"What is there to confess that’s worthwhile or useful? What has happened to us has happened to everyone or only to us; if to everyone, then it’s no novelty, and if only to us, then it won’t be understood. If I write what I feel, it’s to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant. I make landscapes out of what I feel. I make holidays of my sensations. I can easily understand women who embroider out of sorrow or who crochet because life exists."

a well staring at the sky

"We are two abysses – a well staring at the sky."

Everything in me tends to go on to become something else

"Futile and sensitive, I’m capable of violent and consuming impulses – both good and bad, noble and vile – but never of a sentiment that endures, never of an emotion that continues, entering into the substance of my soul. Everything in me tends to go on to become something else. My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while."

Nothing is worth a human soul’s love

"I love all this, perhaps because I have nothing else to love, and perhaps also because nothing is worth a human soul’s love, and so it’s all the same – should we feel the urge to give it."

You’re being exploited

"Deeming that I earn too little, a friend of mine who’s a partner in a successful firm that does a lot of business with the government said the other day: ‘You’re being exploited, Soares.’ And I remembered that indeed I am. But since in life we must all be exploited, I wonder if it’s any worse to be exploited by Vasques and his fabrics than by vanity, by glory, by resentment, by envy or by the impossible."

I asked for very little from life

"I asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me. A nearby field, a ray of sunlight, a little bit of calm along with a bit of bread, not to feel oppressed by the knowledge that I exist, not to demand anything from others, and not to have others demand anything from me – this was denied me, like the spare change we might deny a beggar not because we’re mean-hearted but because we don’t feel like unbuttoning our coat."

By day I am nothing, and by night I am I

"Walking on these streets, until the night falls, my life feels to me like the life they have. By day they’re full of meaningless activity; by night they’re full of a meaningless lack of it. By day I am nothing, and by night I am I. There is no difference between me and these streets."

Dreaming, which my intelligence hates

"I have to choose what I detest – either dreaming, which my intelligence hates, or action, which my sensibility loathes; either action, for which I wasn’t born, or dreaming, for which no one was born.

Detesting both, I choose neither; but since I must on occasion either dream or act, I mix the two things together."

I softly sing – for myself alone

"I see life as a roadside inn where I have to stay until the coach from the abyss pulls up. I don’t know where it will take me, because I don’t know anything. I could see this inn as a prison, for I’m compelled to wait in it; I could see it as a social centre, for it’s here that I meet others. But I’m neither impatient nor common. I leave who will to stay shut up in their rooms, sprawled out on beds where they sleeplessly wait, and I leave who will to chat in the parlours, from where their songs and voices conveniently drift out here to me. I’m sitting at the door, feasting my eyes and ears on the colours and sounds of the landscape, and I softly sing – for myself alone – wispy songs I compose while waiting."

Those who hope for nothing

"Those who hope for nothing because it’s perfectly useless to hope."

The suffering that comes from having already suffered a lot

"The suffering born of the indifference that comes from having already suffered a lot."

People who are on the journey are a lot more interesting

People who are on the journey are a lot more interesting than people who, having found answers, are in dry dock.
~ Lori Villamil

Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known

Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.
~ Montaigne

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt—particularly to doubt one’s cherished beliefs, one’s dogmas and one’s axioms.
~ Will Durant

It dissolves when desired too desperately

"But this sort of wisdom [philosophical] is elusive. It dissolves when desired too desperately, and in times of need it can become paralyzed. Wisdom is not unlike the Tao: if defined too precisely, it will lose its essence; if sought too diligently, it will be missed."

Life is filled with cruel contradictions and bitter ironies

“To sensitive spirits of all ages, life is filled with cruel contradictions and bitter ironies.”

Don’t act as if you are going to live ten thousand years

 “Don’t act as if you are going to live ten thousand years. Death always hangs over you. While you are alive and while it is still in your power, be good.”
~ Marcus Aurelius

Observe the world passing by

“This then remains — remember to retire into this little territory of the inner self—your own world (which is all there is)—and there be free, and, as a human being, observe the world passing by.”
~ Marcus Aurelius

Set of four virtues

"Marcus organized his practice into a set of four virtues which he never stopped practicing. Wisdom—learn what is good and bad, which involvements are beneficial and which are damaging, which concerns are ennobling and which are degrading. Justice—exercise honesty and fairness so that you can always respect yourself; do not be arrogant, thinking you are more than you are; but do not think less of yourself either, thinking you are worth nothing. Fortitude—develop the strength to withstand courageously “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” as Shakespeare later phrased it. And temperance—develop control of one’s passions, resist excesses, and learn to strike a balance in all of life."

Do you see me unhappy

“Do you see me unhappy because thus-and-so has happened to me? Not at all. Rather, I am happy despite its happening to me. Why? Because I continue on, free from pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearing the future. For events such as this happen to every human being.”
~ Marcus Aurelius

Men seek all sorts of escape for themselves

 “Men seek all sorts of escape for themselves—houses in the country, by the seashores, in the mountains; and you too will probably want such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men.”
~ Marcus Aurelius

Of course life has a larger meaning

Of course life has a larger meaning. I feel this every time I find a parking place close to the mall.
~ Lori Villamil

I myself know nothing

I myself know nothing, except just a little, enough to extract an argument from another who is wise and to receive it fairly.
~ Socrates

The ends of things are always painful

"People ask me, “Do you have optimism about the world?” And I say, “Yes, it’s great just the way it is. And you are not going to fix it up. Nobody has ever made it any better. It is never going to be any better. This is it, so take it or leave it. You are not going to correct or improve it.”

It is joyful just as it is. I don’t believe there was anybody who intended it, but this is the way it is. James Joyce has a memorable line: “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” And the way to awake from it is not to be afraid, and to recognize that all of this, as it is, is a manifestation of the horrendous power that is of all creation. The ends of things are always painful. But pain is part of there being a world at all."
~ Joseph Campbell

There is no truth

 “There is no truth, except truth for me.”
~ Kierkegaard

You can’t postpone dealing with reality

You can’t postpone dealing with reality any longer.
~ Robert W. Smith

The world’s a failure

The world’s a failure, you know. Someone, somewhere, made a terrible mistake.
~ Mission Impossible

Call the name of Lucifer

The world has always been ruled by Lucifer. The world is evil. Call his name, my love. Call the name of Lucifer.
~ Ritual of Evil

Evil strides the world

Let us confess it: evil strides the world.
~ Voltaire

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
~ Albert Schweitzer

Life is a comedy to those who think

Life is a comedy to those who think,a tragedy to those who feel.
~ Horace Walpole

The young man who has not wept is a savage

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.
~ Confucius

What’s the use of all your damn books?

Zorba: Why do the young die? Why does anybody die, tell me?
Scholar: I don’t know.
Zorba: What’s the use of all your damn books? If they don’t tell you that, what the hell do they tell you?
Scholar: They tell me about the agony of men who can’t answer questions like yours.
~ Nikos Kazantzakis - Zorba the Greek

Old age is painful

Birth is painful, old age is painful, sickness is painful, death is painful …
The Buddha

There is no hope

“There is no hope.”
“We’re both alive. And for all I know, that’s hope.”
~ “Henry II” The Lion in Winter

He who has a why to live

“He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”
~ Nietzsche

To live is to suffer

“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.”
~ Viktor Frankl

Nothing to lose except ones so ridiculously naked life

"What does one do when he finally realizes that he has “nothing to lose except his so ridiculously naked life”? First come feelings of detachment and curiosity about what is happening, followed by thoughts of hopeful strategies that might be used to salvage anything that is left. Feelings of hunger, fear, and pro- found anger are never far below the surface; a deep humiliation colors every thought; and these feelings become the true enemies of personal growth. These brute facts are softened and made tolerable by cherished images of loved ones, by one’s faith, by a grim sense of humor, and even by fleeting glimpses of the healing beauties of nature such as a green tree, a flower by a fence, or a sunset."

That’s relativity

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute—it’s longer than an hour. That’s relativity!
~ Albert Einstein

Soon he will not know what he wants to do

"Modern humans are caught in an “existential vacuum,” writes the psychologist Viktor Frankl. We are struck with the total meaninglessness of our lives. Increasingly we find nothing worth living for. There is an inner emptiness within us all. We can understand this spiritual void, for it has two sources that have emerged since we began to be human beings. The first was the loss of our instincts, that set of instruc- tions that we, along with all the other animals, carried embedded in our very natures. That was an ancient loss. A more recent trauma to our souls happened when we lost the binding myths and traditions that secured our behavior. Modern man is there- fore lost, Frankl writes, for “no instinct tells him what to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; soon he will not know what he wants to do.”"

Then move to Florida and die

Get a job, make some money, work till you’re sixty, then move to Florida and die.
~ Daniel Quinn

Educated people try to be conscious of their hidden prejudices

Educated people try to be conscious of their hidden prejudices and to measure them against the facts and against the sensibilities of others.
~ Steven Pinker

Hell is no fable

"“To exist is to suffer,” taught the Buddha, and we have devised ingenious ways of escaping existence. We sense a futility in our dreams; an inner voice chides us for yearning for goals we can’t achieve. We often have an empty feeling when we hold in our hands something we have fought for, wondering why we wanted it. All around we see loneliness, surd hatreds, and pointless sadisms. Mephistopheles speaks for many: “Hell is no fable, for this life IS hell.” Away from all this, we are pulled toward death, as though it would be a blessing to have done with it."

Every man is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
~ Bertrand Russell

To act wisely in the world

To act wisely in the world, it is necessary to know that world and understand it.
~ Richard I. Aaron

The world destroys our humanity by the sheer weight of its insanity

"Evolution has succeeded in producing a sentient creature who thinks and feels, aspires, lays plans, and constructs beautiful futures to work toward. We dream dreams—and then discover that the world is designed to crush, not to fulfill, those dreams. We are prepared to live with goodness but find we must perpetually wrestle with evil. Driven by instinct to self-preservation, we never rest from having to face death. We cherish honesty, but find that neither the universe nor humankind is equipped for honesty. The world thus destroys our humanity by the sheer weight of its insanity."

What you’re really looking for is an experience of being alive

 “People talk about looking for the meaning of life; what you’re really looking for is an experience of being alive.”
~ Joseph Campbell

How much more powerful a quantum computer could be

If you imagine the difference between an abacus and the world’s fastest supercomputer, you would still not have the barest inkling of how much more powerful a quantum computer could be compared with the computers we have today.
~ Julian Brown

The wave function

"They solve the problem in a peculiar way. In the absence of a real wave, they imagine an abstract wave—a mathematical wave. If this sounds ludicrous, this was pretty much the reaction of physicists when the idea was first proposed by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in the 1920s. Schrödinger imagined an abstract mathematical wave that spread through space, encountering obstacles and being reflected and transmitted, just like a water wave spreading on a pond. In places where the height of the wave was large, the probability of finding a particle was highest, and in locations where it was small, the probability was lowest. In this way Schrödinger’s wave of probability christened the wave function, informed a particle what to do, and not just a photon—any microscopic particle, from an atom to a constituent of an atom like an electron."

There is perfect symmetry

"To get agreement between the two pictures of light, the particle-like aspect of light must somehow be “informed” about how to behave by its wavelike aspect. In other words, in the microscopic domain, waves do not simply behave like particles; those particles behave like waves as well! There is perfect symmetry. In fact, in a sense this statement is all you need to know about quantum theory (apart from a few details). Everything else follows unavoidably. All the weirdness, all the amazing richness of the microscopic world, is a direct consequence of this wave-particle “duality” of the basic building blocks of reality."

We can only predict the odds

"Physics has given up on the problem of trying to predict what would happen in a given circumstance. We can only predict the odds.”
~ Richard Feynman

To play dice or not to

“God does not play dice with the Universe!”
~ Einstein
"Not only does God play dice with the Universe, he throws the dice where we cannot see them!”
~ Stephen Hawking

It is truly something new under the Sun

"Nothing in the everyday world is fundamentally unpredictable; nothing is truly random. The reason we cannot predict the outcome of a game of roulette or of the toss of a coin is that there is simply too much information for us to take into account. But in principle—and this is the key point—there is nothing to prevent us from predicting both.

Contrast this with the microscopic world of photons. It matters not the slightest how much information we have in our possession. It is impossible to predict whether a given photon will be transmitted or reflected by a window—even in principle. A roulette ball does what it does for a reason—because of the interplay of myriad subtle forces. A photon does what it does for no reason whatsoever! The unpredictability of the microscopic world is fundamental. It is truly something new under the Sun."

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we teach the wave theory

“On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we teach the wave theory and on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays the particle theory,”
~ joked the English physicist William Bragg in 1921

Another person will not do you harm unless you wish it

“Remember that what is insulting is not the person who abuses you or hits you, but the judgment about them that they are insulting. Another person will not do you harm unless you wish it; you will be harmed at just that time at which you take yourself to be harmed.”
~ Epictetus

You have to accept the whole bloody universe

“If you want to accept life, you have to accept the whole bloody universe.”
~ Alexei Panshin - Rite of Passage

What’s running the show

 “What’s running the show is what’s coming up from way down below.”
~  Joseph Campbell

What a crew they are

"Eating, sleeping, copulating, excreting, and the like; what a crew they are!”
~ Marcus Aurelius

To know how many are jealous of you

“To know how many are jealous of you, count your admirers.”
~ Seneca

A thought which is not independent

 “A thought which is not independent is a thought only half understood.”
~ Wittgenstein

Governing a large country

“Governing a large country is like frying a small fish. You can ruin it with too much poking.”
~ Lao-tzu

Some people try to shut off the questions at this point

"What happens, for most of us, is that we get vague, unsatisfactory answers from grown-ups. At first we think they know better answers and are too busy to share the secrets with us. Later, we learn that they may not know either. Some people try to shut off the questions at this point, to concentrate on other things like making friends and money, seeking pleasure, popularity, and love. And, it works—for a while. But, the big questions have a way of coming back, especially during those moments when life gets our attention by stopping the ordinary flow of events with something startling and unexpected. A parent or friend dies young; a loved one betrays us; a cherished dream goes unfulfilled. At times like these, the questions come surging back. What is the purpose of life anyway? Does anything really matter? Are we on a short, unpleasant march toward death?"

In philosophical arguments, everyone wins

"Not the usual kinds of argument in which egos fight to win, but philosophical arguments in which the participants attempt to clarify the reasoning that lies behind their statements; and no one cares about winning since, in philosophical arguments, everyone wins."

There is someone who will struggle against being manipulated

"And there is some value in knowing just that: that in this world of adversary rhetoric and arbitrary partisanship, there is someone who will struggle against being manipulated and polarized. He will only partially succeed. He may reach moments of greater clarity and then fall back into a one-sided point of view, but then, like Kant, he will arouse himself from his “dogmatic slumbers” and start to work again fitting together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle."

The philosopher must stand apart

"The philosopher must stand apart, as best he can, to keep life in perspective. The party members won’t do it, nor will the fearful, the brain-washed, the prejudiced, or the bigoted. But there must be someone. There must be someone who remains sensitively aware of the essential humanness in all thought and action. There must be someone who tries to stay as close to the realities as possible, someone who tries, keeps on trying, and will not give up."

I have a much larger responsibility toward the whole human family

"I am, however, Tibetan before I am Dalai Lama, and I am human before I am Tibetan. So while as Dalai Lama I have a special responsibility to Tibetans, and as a monk I have a special responsibility toward furthering interreligious har- mony, as a human being I have a much larger responsibility toward the whole human family—which indeed we all have."

Since my house burned down

Since my house burned down,
I now own a better view
Of the rising moon

~ Masahide

If the only tool you have is a hammer

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
~  Abraham Maslow

When states can no longer distinguish good men

“When states can no longer distinguish good men from bad men, they will perish.”
~  Antisthenes the Athenian Cynic

If I am not I, who will be?

“If I am not I, who will be?”
~ Thoreau

What could possibly be worth sacrificing satisfaction in order to obtain?

"I would argue, though, that what is really foolish is to spend your life in a state of self-induced dissatisfaction when satisfaction lies within your grasp, if only you will change your mental outlook. To be able to be satisfied with little is not a failing, it is a blessing—if, at any rate, what you seek is satisfaction. And if you seek something other than satisfaction, I would inquire (with astonishment) into what it is that you find more desirable than satisfaction. What, I would ask, could possibly be worth sacrificing satisfaction in order to obtain?"

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing

“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.”
~ Marcus Aurelius

Every day without fail one should consider himself as dead

"Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead."
~ Yamamato Tsunetomo

Vain is the word of a philosopher

“Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.”
~ Epicurus

A barely concealed death wish

"Socrates commented that those who bought food out of season, at an extravagant price, revealed a fear that they would not live until the proper season came round again: ‘Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die’, is a barely concealed death wish."

Induction cannot be rationally justified

"Another popular response is to admit that induction cannot be rationally justified, but to argue that this is not really so problematic after all. How might one defend such a position? Some philosophers have argued that induction is so fundamental to how we think and reason that it's not the sort of thing that could be justified. Peter Strawson, an influential contemporary philosopher, defended this view with the following analogy. If someone worried about whether a particular action was legal, they could consult the law-books and compare the action with what the law-books say. But suppose someone worried about whether the law itself was legal. This is an odd worry indeed. For the law is the standard against which the legality of other things is judged, and it makes little sense  to enquire whether the standard itself is legal. The same applies to  induction, Strawson argued. Induction is one of the standards we use to decide whether claims about the world are justified. For example, we use induction to judge whether a pharmaceutical company's claim about the amazing benefits of its new drug are justified. So it makes little sense to ask whether induction itself is justified."

Our confidence in induction is just blind faith

"So the position is this. Hume points out that our inductive inferences rest on the uniformity of nature assumption. But we cannot prove that uniformity of nature is true, and we cannot produce empirical evidence for its truth without begging the question. So our inductive inferences rest on an assumption about the world for which we have no good grounds. Hume concludes that our confidence in induction is just blind faith - it admits of no rational justification whatever."

Scientific hypotheses can rarely be proved true by the data

"The central role of induction in science is sometimes obscured by the way we talk. For example, you might read a newspaper report that says that scientists have found 'experimental proof that genetically modified maize is safe for humans. What this means is that the scientists have tested the maize on a large number of humans, and none of them have come to any harm. But strictly speaking this doesn't prove that the maize is safe, in the sense in which mathematicians can prove Pythagoras' theorem, say. For the inference from 'the maize didn't harm any of the people on whom it was tested' to 'the maize will not harm anyone' is inductive, not deductive. The newspaper report should really have said that scientists have found extremely good evidence that the maize is safe for humans. The word 'proof should strictly only be used when we are dealing with deductive inferences. In this strict sense of the word, scientific hypotheses can rarely, if ever, be proved true by the data."

When you have eliminated the impossible

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
~ Sherlock Holmes - The Sign of Four

Another brick to the temple of science

“We speak piously of . . . making small studies that will add another brick to the temple of science. Most such bricks just lie around the brickyard.”
~ John R. Platt

You can observe a lot by just watching.

You can observe a lot by just watching.
—Yogi Berra

You know my methods. Apply them.

You know my methods. Apply them.
—Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four

Pseudoscientific theories do not actually have any explanatory teeth

"Rather counterintuitively, Popper also thought that scientific theories cannot ever be proven, because they are always open to the possibility that a new observation—hitherto unknown—will falsify them. For instance, I could observe thousands of four-legged dogs and grow increasingly confident that my theory is right. But then I could turn a corner and see an adult two-legged dog: there goes the theory, falsified by one negative result, regardless of how many positive confirmations I had on my notepad up to that point. In this view of the difference between science and pseudoscience, then, science makes progress not by proving its theories right— because that’s impossible—but by eliminating an increasing number of wrong theories. Pseudoscience, however, does not make progress because its “theories” are so flexible that they can accommodate any observation whatsoever, which means that pseudoscientific theories do not actually have any explanatory teeth."

Beyond the possibilities of knowledge

"The foundation of morality is to . . . give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about this beyond the possibilities of knowledge.”
~ Thomas Henry Huxley

It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood

‘It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.’
~ Popper

Theory has to come first

"Popper used to begin his lecture course on the philosophy of science by asking the students simply to ‘observe’. Then he would wait in silence for one of them to ask  what they were supposed to observe. This was his way of demonstrating one of many flaws in the empiricism that is still part of common sense today. So he would explain to them that scientific observation is impossible without pre-existing knowledge about what to look at, what to look for, how to look, and how to interpret what one sees. And he would explain that, therefore, theory has to come first. It has to be conjectured, not derived."

Present-day methods of education

"Present-day methods of education still have a lot in common with their static-society predecessors. Despite modern talk of encouraging critical thinking, it remains the case that teaching by rote and inculcating standard patterns of behaviour through psychological pressure are integral parts of education, even though they are now wholly or partly renounced in explicit theory. Moreover, in regard to academic knowledge, it is still taken for granted, in practice, that the main purpose of education is to transmit a standard curriculum faithfully. One consequence is that people are acquiring scientific knowledge in an anaemic and instrumental way. Without a critical, discriminating approach to what they are learning, most of them are not effectively replicating the memes of science and reason into their minds. And so we live in a society in which people can spend their days conscientiously using laser technology to count cells in blood samples, and their evenings sitting cross-legged and chanting to draw supernatural energy out of the Earth."

It’s not necessary to live

"“What’s necessary is to sail, it’s not necessary to live!”
shouted Pompey the Great to his frightened sailors after ordering them to weigh anchor in a heavy storm."