Smithee's Picks - ABC by authors

[Smithee]

Below are quotes which especially appeal to me. I have been collecting them from here and from other places.

As I find more I will insert them by editing my initial posts.

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LOGIC / CALIFORNIA
“There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.” - Edward Abbey.

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INTELLECTUAL HONESTY
“Society's pursuit of truth and understanding demands intellectual honesty.” - ‘Abscondo.’
www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/24/995211/-Enough-with-the-intellectual-relativism#

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SCHOLAR’S LIFE
“Few are there that will leave the secure seclusion of the scholar's life, the peaceful walks of literature and learning, to stand out a target for the criticism of unkind and hostile minds.” - Felix Adler.

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PHILOSOPHY TRUTH
“Philosophy must not bargain away anything of the emphatic concept of truth.” - Theodor Adorno.

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THEORY / STAGES
“Every great scientific truth goes through three states: first, people say it conflicts with the Bible; next, they say it has been discovered before; lastly, they say they always believed it.” - Louis Agassiz.

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WOO
“Faithful horoscope-watching, practiced daily provides just the sort of small but warm and infinitely reassuring fillip that gets matters off to a spirited start.” - Shana Alexander.

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ANTI-REASON
“Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle that they are laboring to dethrone: but if they argue without reason (which, in order to be consistent with themselves they must do), they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.” - Ethan Allen.

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BELIEFS / CONTEXT
“It's never pleasant to have one's unquestioning beliefs put in their historical context.” - Kingsley Amis.

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PARSIMONY / PRINCIPLES
"It is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many." - Thomas Aquinas.

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ONE BOOK
“Beware the man of a single book.” - Thomas Aquinas.

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GODS / PROOF

“Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?” - Aristophanes.

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WOO / EVIDENCE
“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? - in ancient astronauts? - in the Bermuda triangle? - in life after death? No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no. One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?" Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.” - Isaac Asimov.

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GOD OF GAPS
“To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.” - Isaac Asimov

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PROBLEMS / IGNORANCE
“If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.” - Isaac Asimov.

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WOO / UNLEARN
“It's not so much what you have to learn if you accept weird theories, it's what you have to unlearn.” - Isaac Asimov.

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BELIEF / DEFENCE
“There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.” - Isaac Asimov.

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COINCIDENCE
“People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.” - Isaac Asimov.

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ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." - Isaac Asimov.

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CREATIONISTS / THEORY
“Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.” - Isaac Asimov.

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KNOWLEDGE / WISDOM
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” - Isaac Asimov.

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ATHEISM
“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.” - Isaac Asimov.

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IGNORANCE / SCIENCE
“There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance only implies ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.” - Isaac Asimov.

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BIBLE
“If you suspect that my interest in the Bible is going to inspire me with sudden enthusiasm for Judaism and make me a convert of mountain‐moving fervor and that I shall suddenly grow long earlocks and learn Hebrew and go about denouncing the heathen - you little know the effect of the Bible on me. Properly read, it is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.” - Isaac Asimov.

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FUNDAMENTALISTS
“Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.” - Isaac Asimov.

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UNDERSTANDING
“When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.” - Isaac Asimov.

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BLASPHEMY
“To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticize ideas, any ideas - even if they are sincerely held beliefs - is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. A law which attempts to say you can criticize and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed.” - Rowan Atkinson.

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RELIGION
“What is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked?” - Rowan Atkinson.

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STUPIDITY / EVIL
“Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.” - Margaret Atwood.

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BELIEFS / REASONS
“Heaven forbid that we should believe in such a way as not to accept or seek reasons, since we could not even believe if we did not possess rational souls.” - Augustine of Hippo.

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RIGHT IS RIGHT
“Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.” - Augustine of Hippo.

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SUPERSTITION / ROOT
“The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.” - Francis Bacon.

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EXPERIMENT / SPECULATION
“The strongest arguments prove nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. Experimental science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation.” -
Roger Bacon.

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INFORMATION / INCOMPLETE OR WRONG
“An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious — just dead wrong.” - Russell Baker.

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HYPOTHETICAL
“Hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers.” - Joan Baez.

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DIVINE TRUTH
“Yes, there is a Divinity, one from which we must never turn aside for the guidance of our huge inward life and of the share we have as well in the life of all men. It is called the truth.” - Henri Barbusse.

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OPINIONS / FACTS
“Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” - Bernard Baruch.

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SOCIETY / KNOWLEDGE
“A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.” - Bernard Beckett.

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TELLING DREAMS
“People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.” - Max Beerbohm.

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DOUBT / CERTAINTY
“Oh! let us never, never doubt what nobody is sure about!” - Hilaire Belloc.

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VANITY / LAUGHTER
"The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that is laughable is vanity." - Henri Bergson.

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BELIEF
“Destruction means construction, for to destroy a false belief is indeed most constructed work.” - Alexander Berkman.

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CRAFT
"Freemasonry is the high art of creating rational mystics." - Ted Berry.

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CRAFT
“FREEMASONS, n. An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and Formless Void. The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious, Thothmes, and Buddha. Its emblems and symbols have been found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the Egyptian Pyramids - always by a Freemason.” - Ambrose Bierce.

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CYNIC
“Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision causes him to see things as they are, not as they ought to be.” - Ambrose Bierce.

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SKEPTIC
“Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.” - Ambrose Bierce.

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FAITH
“Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, things without parallel.” - Ambrose Bierce.

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REFLECTION / OUTCOME
“Since there is no telling in advance where it may lead, reflection can be seen as dangerous.” - Simon Blackburn.

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SCIENCE / FOUNDATIONS
“The scientific world is to be less threatening than was feared. It is to made safe for human beings. And the way to make it safe is to reflect on the foundation of knowledge.” - Simon Blackburn.

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ABSENT CREATOR
“A god that created the world and then walked off the site leaving it to its own devices is not a fit object of worship, nor a source of moral authority.” - Simon Blackburn.

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ENLIGHTENMENT / RESPONSIBILITY
“Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life.” - William Blake.

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BUDDHAS / NONSENSE
“Buddhas don’t practice nonsense.” - Bodhidharma.

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IGNORANCE / WISDOM
“Not engaging in ignorance is wisdom.” - Bodhidharma.

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DELUSIONS / ENLIGHTENMENT
“Not creating delusions is enlightenment.” - Bodhidharma.

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SENSATION & DELUSION
“To enter by reason means to realize the essence through instruction and to believe that all living things share the same true nature, which isn't apparent because it's shrouded by sensation and delusion.” - Bodhidharma.

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NATURE / SEX
“Once you see your nature, sex is basically immaterial.” - Bodhidharma.

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REASON & PRACTICE
“Many roads lead to the path, but basically there are only two: reason and practice. - Bodhidharma.

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STUPIDITY / EVIL
“Stupidity always accompanies evil. Or evil, stupidity.” - Louise Bogan.

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DOUBT / DUTY
“Everyone has the right to doubt everything as often as he pleases and the duty to do it at least once. No way of looking at things is too sacred to be reconsidered. No way of doing things is beyond improvement.” - Edward de Bono.

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THEORY
“The Requisites of a good Hypothesis are: That It be Intelligible. That It neither Assume nor Suppose anything Impossible, unintelligible, or demonstrably False. That It be consistent with Itself. That It be lit and sufficient to Explicate the Phaenomena, especially the chief. That It be, at least, consistent, with the rest of the Phaenomena It particularly relates to, and do not contradict any other known Phaenomena of nature, or manifest Physical Truth.

The Qualities and Conditions of an Excellent Hypothesis are: That It be not Precarious, but have sufficient Grounds in the nature of the Thing Itself or at least be well recommended by some Auxiliary Proofs. That It be the Simplest of all the good ones we are able to frame, at least containing nothing that is superfluous or Impertinent. That It be the only Hypothesis that can Explicate the Phaenomena; or at least, that do's Explicate them so well. That it enable a skilful Naturailst to foretell future Phaenomena by the Congruity or Incongruity to it; and especially the event of such Experlm'ts as are aptly devis'd to examine It, as Things that ought, or ought not, to be consequent to It.” - Robert Boyle.

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PROBLEMS / MIRACLES
“The world presents enough problems if you believe it to be a world of law and order; do not add to them by believing it to be a world of miracles.” - Louis D. Brandeis.

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METAPHYSICS
“Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.” - Francis Herbert Bradley.

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SCIENCE / ERROR
“The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.” - Bertolt Brecht.

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EAST / WEST - ENLIGHTENMENT
“Cultural contamination that is directed outward is always seen as ‘enlightenment.” - David Brin.

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CRITICISM
In all of history, we have found just one cure for error – a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.” - David Brin

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PROVISIONAL KNOWLEDGE
“The actual state of our knowledge is always provisional and ... there must be, beyond what is actually known, immense new regions to discover.” - Louis de Broglie.

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CONCEPTIONS / EXAMINATIONS
“The history of science shows that the progress of science has constantly been hampered by the tyrannical influence of certain conceptions that finally came to be considered as dogma. For this reason, it is proper to submit periodically to a very searching examination, principles that we have come to assume without any more discussion.” - Louis de Broglie.

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SCIENCE / POLITICS
“No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.” -
Jacob Bronowski.

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SYMBOL / MEANING
“Telling someone about what a symbol means is like telling someone how music should make them feel.” - Dan Brown.

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CONSPIRACY / FACTS
“Sooner or later, all conspiracy theories, no matter how outlandish, must eventually rest on a certain set of facts. And facts can be checked.” - Vincent Bugliosi.

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LIES
“When the world has got hold of a lie, it is astonishing how hard it is to kill it. You beat it over the head, till it seems to have given up the ghost, and behold! The next day it is as healthy as ever.” - Bro. Lord Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton.

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PRAYER / SANDWICH
“Don't pray for me, make me a sandwich or something, because I'm very upset right now and I can't make my own sandwich, so it would be cool if you could make me a sandwich or something instead of praying, because praying is lazy.” - Hannibal Buress

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FRAUD
“Sir, the pretending to extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Ghost is a horrid thing, a very horrid thing.” - Joseph Butler.

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IGNORANCE
“Beware: Ignorance protects itself. Ignorance promotes suspicion. Suspicion engenders fear. Fear quails, irrational and blind, or fear looms, defiant and closed. Blind, closed, suspicious, afraid, ignorance protects itself, and protected, Ignorance grows.” - Octavia E. Butler.

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ANALOGY
“Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.” - Samuel Butler.

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NEW IDEAS
"An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on, in which latter case the sooner we get rid of them the better." - Samuel Butler.

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RELATIVISM / RIGHTS
“Relativism should be confronted where it damages fundamental human rights, because we're not relativists if we believe that the human being should be at the centre of society and the rights of every human being should be respected.” - Rocco Buttiglione.

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REASON
“Those who will not reason are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.” George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron).

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REASON / SUPERSTITION
“As it is the chief concern of wise men, to retrench the evils of life, by reasonings of philosophy; so it is the employment of fools, to multiply them, by sentiments of superstition.” - Bro. Wellins Calcott.

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NOT STUPID
“'I'm not stupid!' In Bean's experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove its own inaccuracy.” - Orson Scott Card.

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AUTHORITY / BELIEF
“I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.” - George Carlin.

*

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” - George Carlin.

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STUPID / GROUPS
“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.” - George Carlin.

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GHOST / EYES
“No ghost was ever seen by two pair of eyes.” - Thomas Carlyle.

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IGNORANCE / TRAGEDY
“That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy.” - Thomas Carlyle.

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LOGIC / PHILOSOPHY
“Logic is the last scientific ingredient of Philosophy; its extraction leaves behind only a confusion of non-scientific, pseudo problems.” - Rudolf Carnap.

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FAITH / FALLIBILITY
“It is often said that mankind needs a faith if the world is to be improved. In fact, unless the faith is vigilantly and regularly checked by a sense of man's fallibility, it is likely to make the world worse. From Torquemada to Robespierre and Hitler the men who have made mankind suffer the most have been inspired to do so have been inspired to do so by a strong faith; so strong that it led them to think their crimes were acts of virtue necessary to help them achieve their aim, which was to build some sort of an ideal kingdom on earth.” - David Cecil.

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TRUTH
“An egoist can be won over by being respected, a crazy person can be won over by allowing him to behave in an insane manner and a wise person can be won over by truth.” - Chanakya.

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RELATIVITY / REALITY
“The modern habit of saying ‘This is my opinion, but I may be wrong’ is entirely irrational. If I say that it may be wrong, I say that is not my opinion. The modern habit of saying ‘Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and it suits me’ - the habit of saying this is mere weak-mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos.” - G.K. Chesterton

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ABSURDITY
“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” - Noam Chomsky.

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CENSORSHIP / NONSENSE
“Censorship encouraged people to believe nonsense.” - John Christopher.

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TRUTH INCONTROVERTIBLE
“The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.” - Bro. Winston Churchill.

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SCIENCE / EXPERIENCE
“If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong.” - Arthur C. Clarke.

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SCIENCE / SUPERSTITION
“Speculation is perfectly all right, but if you stay there you've only founded a superstition. If you test it, you've started a science.” - Hal Clement.

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INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
“It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” –W.K. Clifford

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WOO
"For every credibility gap there is a gullibility fill." - Richard Cobden.

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SYMBOL
“An idea, in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but by a symbol.” - Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

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SCIENCE
“The science of mathematics performs more than it promises, but the science of metaphysics promises more than it performs.” - Charles Caleb Colton.

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AFFIRMATION / NEGATION
“Knowledge is twofold and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true, but in the negation of what is false.” - Charles Caleb Colton.

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KNOWLEDGE
“To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” - Nicolaus Copernicus.

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SCIENCE
“What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on.” - Jacques Yves Cousteau.

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CENSORSHIP
“Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.” - Bruce Coville.

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WOO
"Human beings ... are far too prone to generalize from one instance. The technical word for this, interestingly enough, is superstition." - Francis Crick.

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KNOWLEDGE / PREJUDICES
“The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and wilfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.” - Aleister Crowley.

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NOT SMART / STUPID
“I didn’t say you weren’t smart. I said you were stupid.” - Cath Crowley.

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SCIENCE
“I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery also has its beauty. Neither do I believe that the spirit of adventure runs any risk of disappearing in our world. If I see anything vital around me, it is precisely that spirit of adventure, which seems indestructible and is akin to curiosity.” - Marie Curie.

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REASON
“It never struck me how illogical it was to say that I believed in what I could not understand and what is in fact unintelligible. I might have said with entire truth that I had no wish to dispute any dogma; but I never was such a fool as to feel and say ‘credo quia incredibile’ (I believe because it is incredible).” - Charles Darwin.

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SPECULATE
“A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.” - Charles Darwin.

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SCIENCE / IGNORANCE
“It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known: but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.” - Charles Darwin.

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GROSS NONSENSE
“There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.” - Robertson Davies.

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DELUSIONS
Many people believe in God because they believe they have seen a vision of him - or of an angel or a virgin in blue – with their own eyes. Or he speaks to them inside their heads. This argument from personal experience is the one that is most convincing to those who claim to have had one. But it is the least convincing to anyone else, and anyone knowledgeable about psychology. You say you have experienced God directly? Well, some people have experienced a pink elephant, but that probably doesn’t impress you. Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, distinctly heard the voice of Jesus telling him to kill women, and he was locked up for life. George W. Bush says that God told him to invade Iraq (a pity God didn’t vouchsafe him a revelation that there were no weapons of mass destruction). Individuals in asylums think they are Napoleon or Charlie Chaplin, or that the entire world is conspiring against them, or that they can broadcast their thoughts into other people’s heads. We humour them but don’t take their internally revealed beliefs seriously, mostly because not many people share them. Religious experiences are different only in that the people who claim them are numerous.” - Richard Dawkins.

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FAITH
“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.” - Richard Dawkins.

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CREDULOUS
“By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.” - Richard Dawkins.

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BELIEF
“I once wrote that anybody who believes the world is only 6,000 years old is either ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked ... “I don't withdraw a word of my initial statement. But I do now think it may have been incomplete. There is perhaps a fifth category, which may belong under "insane" but which can be more sympathetically characterized by a word like tormented, bullied, or brainwashed. Sincere people who are not ignorant, not stupid, and not wicked can be cruelly torn, almost in two, between the massive evidence of science on the one hand, and their understanding of what their holy book tells them on the other. I think this is one of the truly bad things religion can do to a human mind. There is wickedness here, but it is the wickedness of the institution and what it does to a believing victim, not wickedness on the part of the victim himself.” - Richard Dawkins.”

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IMAGINATION
“I accept that there may be things far grander and more incomprehensible than we can possibly imagine.” - Richard Dawkins.

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GOD
“The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no.” - Richard Dawkins.

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AGGRESSION
“Sometimes I think it's possible to mistake desire for clarity and talking in a no-nonsense way for aggression.” - Richard Dawkins.

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METAPHORS
“Metaphors are fine if they aid understanding, but sometimes they get in the way.” - Richard Dawkins.

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WOO
“If a paranormalist could really give an unequivocal demonstration of telepathy (precognition, psychokinesis, reincarnation, whatever it is), he would be the discoverer of a totally new principle unknown to physical science. The discoverer of the new energy field that links mind to mind in telepathy, or of the new fundamental force that moves objects around a table top, deserves a Nobel prize and would probably get one. If you are in possession of this revolutionary secret of science, why not prove it and be hailed as the new Newton? Of course, we know the answer. You can't do it. You are a fake.” - Richard Dawkins.

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FAITH / REASON
“If you want to reason about faith, and offer a reasoned (and reason-responsive) defense of faith as an extra category of belief worthy of special consideration, I'm eager to play. I certainly grant the existence of the phenomenon of faith; what I want to see is a reasoned ground for taking faith seriously as a way of getting to the truth, and not, say, just as a way people comfort themselves and each other (a worthy function that I do take seriously). But you must not expect me to go along with your defence of faith as a path to truth if at any point you appeal to the very dispensation you are supposedly trying to justify. Before you appeal to faith when reason has you backed into a corner, think about whether you really want to abandon reason when reason is on your side.” - Daniel C. Dennett III.

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CULTURAL RELATIVISM
“I should emphasize this, to keep well-meaning but misguided multiculturalists at bay: the theoretical entities in which these tribal people frankly believe — the gods and other spirits — don't exist. These people are mistaken, and you know it as well as I do. It is possible for highly intelligent people to have a very useful but mistaken theory, and we don't have to pretend otherwise in order to show respect for these people and their ways.” - Daniel C. Dennett III.

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SUPERSTITION / FAITH
"The superstition that a belief based on faith is different from a superstition is the greatest superstition of all." - Karlheinz Deschner.

*

“Many things between Heaven and Earth fill me with wonder; but of all of these, the least wondrous to me are the wonders of Religion.” - Karlheinz Deschner.

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SKEPTICISM / EDUCATION
“Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind.” - John Dewey.

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PSYCHOSIS / DELUSIONS
“The psychotic does not merely think he sees four blue bivalves with floppy wings wandering up the wall; he does see them. An hallucination is not, strictly speaking, manufactured in the brain; it is received by the brain, like any 'real' sense datum, and the patient act in response to this to-him-very-real perception of reality in as logical a way as we do to our sense data. In any way to suppose he only 'thinks he sees it' is to misunderstand totally the experience of psychosis.” - Philip K. Dick.

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REALITY
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” - Philip K. Dick.

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PSYCHOSIS / PARSIMONY
“The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque.” - Philip K. Dick.

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NOT QUESTIONED
"A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence skepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone." - 
Denis Diderot.

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SKEPTICISM / TRUTH
"Skepticism is the first step toward truth." - Denis Diderot

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THEORY / FACTS
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.” - Bro. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

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SKEPTIC
"If you are searching for sacred knowledge and not just a palliative for your fears, then you will train yourself to be a good skeptic." - Ann Druyan.

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COMFORT
“Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.” - Finley Peter Dunne.

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MEANING
“Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.” - Bob Dylan.

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CULTURAL RELATIVISM
“The idea of cultural relativism is nothing but an excuse to violate human rights.” - Shirin Ebadi.

**

RELIGIOUS CONVICTION
“People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.” ― Umberto Eco.

*

FEAR PROPHETS
“Fear prophets, And, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.” ― Umberto Eco.

**

UNIVERSE / STRANGER
“Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.” - Arthur Eddington.

**

PERCENTAGE / THINK
“Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.” - Thomas A. Edison.

**

MORALITY
“Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.” - Albert Einstein.

*

MORALITY
“A people that were to honor falsehood, defamation, fraud, and murder would be unable, indeed, to subsist for very long.” - Albert Einstein.

*

CREDIBILITY
“Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.” - Albert Einstein.

*

PREJUDICES
“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions that differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.” - Albert Einstein.

*

HUMANISM
“I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem - the most important of all human problems.” - Albert Einstein.

*

WOO
“The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the rampant growth of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no more than a symptom of weakness and confusion.” - Albert Einstein.

*

SCIENCE / VALUES
“Science can only determine what is, but not what shall be, and beyond its realm, value judgements remain indispensable. Religion, on the other hand, is concerned only with evaluating human thought and actions; it is not qualified to speak of real facts and the relationships between them.” - Albert Einstein.

*

TELEPATHY
“It seems hard to sneak a look at God's cards. But that He plays dice and uses "telepathic" methods ... is something that I cannot believe for a single moment.” - Albert Einstein.

**

SPRIT & SOUL
“Spirit and soul is horseshit of the worst sort. Obviously there are no fairies, no Santa Clauses, no spirits. What there is, is human goals and purposes as noted by sane existentialists. But a lot of transcendentalists are utter screwballs.” - Albert Ellis.

*

SCIENCE / MISTAKES
“A scientist is a mimosa when he himself has made a mistake, and a roaring lion when he discovers a mistake of others.” - Albert Einstein.

**

INFORMED OPINIONS
“Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that’s horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our informed opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it’s nothing. It’s just bibble-babble. It’s like a fart in a wind tunnel, folks.” - Harlan Ellison.

**

LIFE
“Wherever we find life we find it associated with an albuminous body, and wherever we find an albuminous body not in process of dissolution, there also without exception we find phenomena of life.” - Frederick Engels.

**

GOD / EVIL
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” - Epicurus.

***

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IDEAS DEFENCE
“Why do people insist on defending their ideas and opinions with such ferocity, as if defending honour itself? What could be easier to change than an idea?” - J.G. Farrell.

**

CERTAINTY / INFANTILE
“The quest for absolute certainty is an immature, if not infantile, trait of thinking.” - Herbert Feigl.

**

GULLIBILITY / SHEEP
“He marveled at the gullibility and vulnerability of his fellow humans. No wonder the churches called them sheep. They were woolly-headed pack animals being herded around for the benefit of whoever knew how to control the dogs.” - Craig Ferguson.

**

IRRATIONAL
“It is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.” - Richard P. Feynman.

*

EXPERTS
“Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation … Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” - Richard Feynman.

*

DUNNING -KRUGER
“We have found it of paramount importance that, in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt.” - Richard P. Feynman.

*

KNOWING / DOUBT
“Some people say, "How can you live without knowing?" I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know.” - Richard P. Feynman.

*

NOT KNOWING
“I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.” - Richard P. Feynman.

*

NOT KNOWING
“I have approximate answers and possible beliefs in different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and of many things I don't know anything about, but I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.” - Richard P. Feynman.

*

PROBABILITY
“So my antagonist said, "Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it's impossible?" "No", I said, "I can't prove it's impossible. It's just very unlikely." At that he said, "You are very unscientific. If you can't prove it impossible then how can you say that it's unlikely?" But that is the way that is scientific. It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible.” - Richard P. Feynman.

*

TRUTH WILL OUT
“We've learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science.” - Richard P. Feynman.

**

NULL HYPOTHESIS
"The null hypothesis is never proved or established, but is possibly disproved, in the course of experimentation. Every experiment may be said to exist only to give the facts a chance of disproving the null hypothesis." - R.A. Fisher.

**

FACT / CAUSE
“Let us be well assured of the matter of fact, before we trouble ourselves with enquiring into the cause.” - Bernard Fontenelle.

**

BORN IGNORANT
“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”- Bro. Benjamin Franklin.

*

UNWILLING TO LEARN
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.” - Benjamin Franklin.

**

SCIENCE / WORLD VIEW
“You frequently state, and in your letter you imply, that I have developed a completely one-sided outlook and look at everything in terms of science. Obviously my method of thought and reasoning is influenced by a scientific training - if that were not so my scientific training will have been a waste and a failure.” - Rosalind Franklin.

*

SCIENCE / LIFE
“But you look at science (or at least talk of it) as some sort of demoralizing invention of man, something apart from real life, and which must be cautiously guarded and kept separate from everyday existence. But science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated. Science, for me, gives a partial explanation for life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment.” - Rosalind Franklin.

*

FAITH / THIS WORLD
“I maintain that faith in this world is perfectly possible without faith in another world.” - Rosalind Franklin.

**

LONG WORDS
“Why does everyone have to pretend to be stupid and not know long words?”- Martin Freeman.

**

IGNORANCE = DISINTEREST
“There are young men and women up and down the land who happily (or unhappily) tell anyone who will listen that they don’t have an academic turn of mind, or that they aren’t lucky enough to have been blessed with a good memory, and yet can recite hundreds of pop lyrics and reel off any amount of information about footballers. Why? Because they are interested in those things. They are curious. If you are hungry for food, you are prepared to hunt high and low for it. If you are hungry for information it is the same. Information is all around us, now more than ever before in human history. You barely have to stir or incommode yourself to find things out. The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.” - Stephen Fry.

*

SIGN OF SKEPSIS
“I am a true skeptic, born under the noble sign of skepsis, the sign of the man who knows that all astrology is absolutely and without reservation the bullest of bullsh*t that ever there was. It is a senseless delusion that does not even have the benefit of being harmless fun. It is a harmful bore. Harmful to the human spirit, harmful to the dignity and wonder of the real universe and the real power of the mind to think for itself.” - Stephen Fry.

*

NOT EVERYTHING KNOWN
“You'll often hear the phrase "science doesn't know everything." Well, of course it doesn't know everything. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean that it knows nothing.” - Stephen Fry.

**

FALSEHOODS
“It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.” - Margaret Fuller.

***

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REASON / USE
“I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reasons, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” - Galileo Galilei.

**

TRUTH / MINORITY
“Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.” - M.K. (Mahatma) Gandhi.

*

HABITS / DESTINY
“Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny.” - M.K. (Mahatma) Gandhi.

*

THEN YOU WIN
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” - M.K. (Mahatma) Gandhi.

*

ERROR / TRUTH
“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.” - M.K. (Mahatma) Gandhi.

*

SELF-EVIDENT
“Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.” - M.K. (Mahatma) Gandhi.

*

TRUTH / NON-VIOLENCE
My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realising Him.” - M.K. (Mahatma) Gandhi.

*

GOD / TRUTH
“God, as Truth, has been for me a treasure beyond price. May He be so to every one of us.” - M.K. (Mahatma) Gandhi.

*

SELF-SUSTAINED
“Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.” - M.K. (Mahatma) Gandhi.

*

FAITH / REASON
“Faith ... must be enforced by reason ... when faith becomes blind it dies.” - M.K. (Mahatma) Gandhi.

*

TRUTH / JUSTICE
“Truth never damages a cause that is just.” - M.K. (Mahatma) Gandhi.

*

NON-COOPERATION WITH EVIL
“Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” - M.K. (Mahatma) Gandhi.

*

MORALITY / TRUTH
“Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.” - M.K. (Mahatma) Gandhi.

*

SHUN EVIL
“Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.” - M.K. (Mahatma) Gandhi.

*

TRUTH / NON-VIOLENCE
“I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.” - M.K. (Mahatma) Gandhi.

**

PSEUDOSCIENCE
“There are, and always have been, destructive pseudo-scientific notions linked to race
and religion; these are the most widespread and damaging. Hopefully, educated
people can succeed in shedding light into these areas of prejudice and ignorance, for
as Voltaire once said: ‘Men will commit atrocities as long as they believe absurdities’." - Martin Gardner.

*

DEBUNKING
“Debunking bad science should be a constant obligation of the science community, even if it takes time away from serious research or seems to be a losing battle. One takes comfort from the fact there is no Gresham's laws in science. In the long run, good science drives out bad.” - Martin Gardner.

**

SKEPTIC
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumoured by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” - Siddhartha Gautama, “The Buddha.”

*

NOT STARTING
“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.” - Siddhartha Gautama, “The Buddha.”

**


DEBATE / DISAGREEMENT
“I don't feel that an atmosphere of debate and total disagreement and argument is such a bad thing. It makes for a vital and alive field.” - Clifford James Geertz.

**

THINK FOR THEMSELVES
“I would have men think for themselves. If we do not, we can only abandon one superstition to take up another, and it may be a worse one. It is as bad for a man to think that he can know nothing as to think he knows all.” - Henry George.

*

FOR OR AGAINST
“He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it.” - Henry George.

**

BIBLE
"The things that you're liable to read in the Bible - it ain't necessarily so." - Ira Gershwin.

**

RELIGION
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.” - Edward Gibbon.

**

REASON / EXPERIMENTS / OPINIONS
In the discovery of secret things, and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators of the common sort.” - Bro. Sir W.S. Gilbert.

**

PREDICTION
“A prediction, in a field where prediction is not possible, is no more than a prejudice.” Malcolm Gladwell

**

AGGRESSIVE STUPIDITY
“There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.” - Bro. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

*

WISDOM / PERSONAL
"All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.” - Bro. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

*

KNOW THY SELF
“Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.” - Bro. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

**

OPINIONS / REALITY
“Human consensus does not generate reality. Were it able to do so, the Sun would have taken to orbiting the Earth some time ago.” - Ursula Goodenough.

**

FACTS
“In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’ I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.” - Stephen Jay Gould.

*

SCIENCE / FUNDAMENTALISM
“Science is a method for testing claims about the natural world, not an immutable compendium of absolute truths. The fundamentalists, by "knowing" the answers before they start, and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science - or of any honest intellectual inquiry.” - Stephen Jay Gould.

*

REVOLUTION / DETHRONEMENT
“The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.” - Stephen Jay Gould.

**

SKEPIC
“I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.” - G.I. Gurdjieff.

**

RESEARCH
“We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don't stand up to experimentation, Buddha's own words must be rejected.” - Tenzin Gyatso, Dalai Lama XIV.

*

REALITY / AUTHORITY
“On the philosophical level, both Buddhism and modern science share a deep suspicion of any notion of absolutes, whether conceptualize as a transcendent being, as an eternal, unchanging principle such as soul, or as a fundamental substratum of reality ... In the Buddhist investigation of reality, at least in principle, empirical evidence should triumph over scriptural authority, no matter how deeply venerated a scripture may be.” - Tenzin Gyatso, Dalai Lama XIV.

*

GOD / THEORY
“Buddhism does not accept a theory of God, or a creator.” - Tenzin Gyatso, Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama XIV.

*

PRAYER
“I think prayer is, for the most part, simply reminders in your daily practice. So, the verses look like prayers, but are actually reminders of how to speak, how to deal with other problems, other people, things like that in daily life.” - Tenzin Gyatso, Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama XIV.

*

FAITH / SKEPTICISM
“Sometimes it seems that there is quite a distance between a way of thinking based on faith and one entirely based on experiment, remaining skeptical. Unless you find something through investigation, you do not want to accept it as fact. From one viewpoint, Buddhism is a religion, from another viewpoint Buddhism is a science of mind and not a religion. Buddhism can be a bridge between these two sides. Therefore, with this conviction I try to have closer ties with scientists, mainly in the fields of cosmology, psychology, neurobiology and physics.” - Tenzin Gyatso, Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama XIV.

*

SKEPTICISM / REALITY
"Without skepticism, no question arises. If there’s no question, there’s no investigation. And if there’s no investigation, you can’t find the reality of things." - Tenzin Gyatso, Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama XIV.

***

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KNOWLEDGE / DEW
“Ah! how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathers it up like water, but like water it runs between his fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation of fools call out, 'See, he is a wise man!' Is it not so?” - H. Rider Haggard.

**

BELIEF / REALITY
“Rationalism doesn’t require “belief,” only observation. The real, measurable world doesn’t care what you believe.” - Joe Haldeman.

**

FACTS / CHAOS
“When the mind withdraws into itself and dispenses with facts it makes only chaos.” - Edith Hamilton.

**

DELUSION
“There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn't there.” - Thomas Hardy.

**

EVIDENCE
“I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.” - Sam Harris.

*

PROOF
Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever. - Sam Harris.

*

PSEUDOSCIENCE
“It is also worth noting that one can obtain a Ph.D. in any branch of science for no other purpose than to make cynical use of scientific language in an effort to rationalize the glaring inadequacies of the Bible. A handful of Christians appear to have done this; some have even obtained their degrees from reputable universities. No doubt, others will follow in their footsteps. While such people are technically "scientists," they are not behaving like scientists. They simply are not engaged in an honest inquiry into the nature of the universe. And their proclamations about God and the failures of Darwinism do not in the least signify that there is a legitimate scientific controversy about evolution.” - Sam Harris.

*

US / WOO
“Unreason is now ascendant in the United States — in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.” - Sam Harris.

*

EVIDENCE
“If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide that proves they should value evidence. If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument would you invoke to prove they should value logic?” - Sam Harris.

**

SCIENCE / PASSION
“Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion.” - Stephen Hawking.

**

ACCURACY / HONESTY
“Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.” - Bro. Nathaniel Hawthorne.

**

HALLUCINATION / TRUTH
“The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.” - William Hazlitt.

*

FANTATICISM
“Modern fanaticism thrives in proportion to the quantity of contradictions and nonsense it pours down the throats of the gaping multitude, and the jargon and mysticism it offers to their wonder and credulity.” - William Hazlitt.

**

PSEUDOSCIENCE
“The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship.” - Robert A. Heinlein.

*

NONSENSE / VIOLENCE
“The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.” - Robert A. Heinlein.

*

VILLAINY / STUPIDITY
“You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.” - Robert A. Heinlein.

**

BELIEF / MORALITY
“Belief is a moral act for which the believer is to be held responsible.” - Lillian Hellman.

**

ASK
“Tell me, O wise man, how hast thou come to know so astonishingly much? 'By never being ashamed to ask of those that knew'!” - Bro. Johann Gottfried Herder.

**

IF
“If! If! You can get 'round anything with 'if'.” - Hergé.

**

INDIFFERENCE
"Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society." - Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

**

SCIENTIFIC ENQUIRY
“A mind which has once imbibed a taste for scientific enquiry, and has learnt the habit of applying its principles readily to the cases which occur, has within itself an inexhaustible source of pure and exciting contemplations.” - John Herschel.

**

KNOW THY SELF
“I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha." He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time.” - Hermann Hesse.

**

FREEDOM / CONSEQUENCES
“Freedom of speech does not protect you from the consequences of saying stupid shit.” - Jim C. Hines.

**

EPILEPSY / DIVINITY
“Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end to divine things.” - Hippocrates.

**

EVIDENCE
“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” - Christopher Hitchens.

*

CRANIAL CAPACITY
“The sad thing is that so many people, in the belief that the universe is organized to suit and influence them, are willing to sacrifice even the slight cranial capacity with which evolution has equipped us.” - Christopher Hitchens.

*

STUPIDITY
“What is it you most dislike? ‘Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition’.” - Christopher Hitchens.


**

RUBBISH
“An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.” - Eric Hoffer.

**

MORAL RELATIVISM
“It is possible that the distinction between moral relativism and moral absolutism has sometimes been blurred because an excessively consistent practice of either leads to the same practical result — ruthlessness in political life.” - Richard Hofstadter.

**

TRUTH IS TOUGH
“Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

*

SIMPLICITY / COMPLEXITY
“I wouldn't give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity; I would give my right arm for the simplicity on the far side of complexity.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

*

SIN / TOOLS / LIE

“Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.


**

GULLIBILITY
“A certain portion of the human race has certainly a taste for being diddled.”- Thomas Hood.

**

MEAN / SAY
“And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.” - Khaled Hosseini.

**

SPECULATION
“Not until the empirical results are exhausted need we pass on to the dreamy realms of speculation" - Edwin Hubble.

**

SUPERSTITION / SCIENTIFIC
"A superstition which pretends to be scientific creates a much greater confusion of thought than one which contents itself with simple popular practices." - Johan Huizinga.

**

THEORY / STAGES
“There are three stages of scientific discovery: first people deny it is true; then they deny it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.” - Alexander von Humboldt.

**

PROBABILITY
“When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived or that the fact which he relates should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other and according to the superiority which I discover, I pronounce my decision. Always I reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates, then and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.”- David Hume.

*

CERTAINTY / PASSION
“Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense, which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities.” - David Hume.

*

IMAGINATION
“Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination, and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers.” - David Hume.

*

BELIEF / EVIDENCE
“A wise man … proportions his belief to the evidence.” - David Hume.

**

“The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.” - Hubert Humphrey.

**

WOO / INTELLIGENCE
“You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion … Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.” - Aldous Huxley.

*

FACTS / IGNOR-ANCE
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” - Aldous Huxley.

**

SPECULATION / FACTS
“To speculate without facts is to attempt to enter a house of which one has not the key, by wandering aimlessly round and round, searching the walls and now and then peeping through the windows. Facts are the key.” - Julian Huxley.

**

BELIEF / MORALITY
“The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.” - Thomas Huxley.

*

COMMON SENSE / SCIENCE
"Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic." - Thomas Huxley

*

AUTHORITY / FAITH
“The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.” - Thomas Huxley.

*

CERTAINTY / EVIDENCE
“Agnosticism is not properly described as a "negative" creed, nor indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as it expresses absolute faith in the validity of a principle which is as much ethical as intellectual. This principle may be stated in various ways, but they all amount to this: that it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.” - Thomas Huxley.

*

AGNOSTICISM / MORALITY
“This is what agnosticism asserts; and, in my opinion, it is all that is essential to agnosticism. That which agnostics deny and repudiate as immoral is the contrary doctrine, that there are propositions which men ought to believe, without logically satisfactory evidence; and that reprobation ought to attach to the profession of disbelief in such inadequately supported propositions. The justification of the agnostic principle lies in the success which follows upon its application, whether in the field of natural or in that of civil history; and in the fact that, so far as these topics are concerned, no sane man thinks of denying its validity.” - Thomas Huxley.

***

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THEOCRACY / SCIENCE
“When the theologian governed the world, it was covered with huts and hovels for the many, palaces and cathedrals for the few. To nearly all the children of men, reading and writing were unknown arts. The poor were clad in rags and skins — they devoured crusts, and gnawed bones. The day of Science dawned, and the luxuries of a century ago are the necessities of to-day. Men in the middle ranks of life have more of the conveniences and elegancies than the princes and kings of the theological times. But above and over all this, is the development of mind. There is more of value in the brain of an average man of today — of a master-mechanic, of a chemist, of a naturalist, of an inventor, than there was in the brain of the world four hundred years ago. These blessings did not fall from the skies. These benefits did not drop from the outstretched hands of priests. They were not found in cathedrals or behind altars — neither were they searched for with holy candles. They were not discovered by the closed eyes of prayer, nor did they come in answer to superstitious supplication. They are the children of freedom, the gifts of reason, observation and experience — and for them all, man is indebted to man.” - Bro. Robert G Ingersoll.

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ANTI-REASON
“To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead.” - Bro. Robert G Ingersoll.

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“When I became convinced that the universe is natural, that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell. The dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world, not even in infinite space. I was free — free to think, to express my thoughts — free to live my own ideal, free to live for myself and those I loved, free to use all my faculties, all my senses, free to spread imagination's wings, free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope, free to judge and determine for myself… I was free! I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously faced all worlds.” - Bro. Robert G Ingersoll.

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IGNORANCE / FAITH
“Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith. Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.” - Bro. Robert G. Ingersoll.

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SLAVERY / IGNORANCE
“There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence.” - Bro. Robert G. Ingersoll.

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FACTS / MIRACLES
“A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every other fact in the universe, and that is how you can tell whether it is or is not a fact. A lie will not fit anything except another lie.” - Bro. Robert G. Ingersoll.

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TRUTH / MIRACLES
“No one, in the world's whole history, ever attempted to substantiate a truth by a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of miracle. Nothing but falsehood ever attested itself by signs and wonders. No miracle ever was performed, and no sane man ever thought he had performed one, and until one is performed, there can be no evidence of the existence of any power superior to, and independent of nature.” - Bro. Robert G. Ingersoll.

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IGNORANCE / WOO
“With their backs to the sunrise they worship the night.” - Bro. Robert G. Ingersoll.

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CONSEQUENCES
“In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishments - there are consequences.” - Bro. Robert G. Ingersoll.

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LOOK RIDICULOUS
“Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.” - Molly Ivins.

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NEW IDEAS
“First, you know, a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.” - William James.

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REASONABLE PROBABILITY
“If we claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp.” - William James.

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SHARP OPINION
“Beware: open-mindedness will often say, 'Everything is permissible except a sharp opinion'.” - Criss Jami.

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CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
“It is possible to induce incorrect notions of cause and effect in most people in just a few minutes. All that is necessary is to expose them to rewards which they believe they are generating based on their actions when in fact the rewards are randomly awarded. People will latch onto any seeming success and repeat it, even when they have to explain repeated failures as well. It appears practically impossible, or at least very rare, for humans not to be influenced by immediate experiences of concrete results. This is true even if the experiences turn out to have limited theoretical validity. The moment of surprise is not when people repeat alchemical failures but when they begin to do something else.” - Naomi Janowitz,

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RIDICULE / WOO
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus." - Thomas Jefferson.

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ERROR / REASON
“Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” Thomas Jefferson.

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REASON / ERROR
“Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.” - Thomas Jefferson.

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ERRONEOUS DOCTRINES
“To me it is far more pleasant to agree than to differ; but it is impossible that one who has any regard for truth can long avoid protesting against doctrines which seem to him to be erroneous.” - William Stanley Jevons.

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AUTHORITY / TRUTH
“In matters of philosophy and science, authority has ever been the great opponent of truth. A despotic calm is usually the triumph of error. In the republic of the sciences sedition and even anarchy are beneficial in the long run to the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” - William Stanley Jevons.

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CERTAINTY / PROBABILITY
“I am convinced that it is impossible to expound the methods of induction in a sound manner, without resting them upon the theory of probability. Perfect knowledge alone can give certainty, and in nature perfect knowledge would be infinite knowledge, which is clearly beyond our capacities. We have, therefore, to content ourselves with partial knowledge — knowledge mingled with ignorance, producing doubt.” - William Stanley Jevons.

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ATTACHMENT / BELIEF
“If there's something you really want to believe, that's what you should question the most.” - Penn Jillette.

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HABITS / CHAINS
“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.” - Samuel Johnson.

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STUPID STATEMENT
“I doubt you can understand the magnitude of the stupidity in your statement.” - Robert Jordan.

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SENSE / NONSENSE
“The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.” - Carl Gustav Jung.

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[Smithee]

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SCIENCE / WISDOM
“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.” - Immanuel Kant.

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ENLIGHTENMENT / INTELLIGENCE
“Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.” - Immanuel Kant.

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METAPHYSICS
“Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.” - Lord Kelvin (William Thomson)

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CERTAINTY
"Absolute certainty is a privilege of uneducated minds - and fanatics. It is, for scientific folk, an unattainable ideal" - Cassius J. Keyser.

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IMPARTIALITY / PREJUDICE
“If the soul is impartial in receiving information, it devotes to that information the share of critical investigation the information deserves, and its truth or untruth thus becomes clear. However, if the soul is infected with partisanship for a particular opinion or sect, it accepts without a moment’s hesitation the information that is agreeable to it. Prejudice and partisanship obscure the critical faculty and preclude critical investigation. The results is that falsehoods are accepted and transmitted.” - Ibn Khaldûn.

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WAYS 2B FOOLED
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” - Søren Kierkegaard.

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IGNORANCE & STUPIDITY
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." – Martin Luther King Jr

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CENSORSHIP
“If there's one American belief I hold above all others, it's that those who would set themselves up in judgment on matters of what is "right" and what is "best" should be given no rest; that they should have to defend their behavior most stringently.” - Stephen King.

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THEORY / STAGES
“First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you” - Nicholas Klein.

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MAP / TERRITORY
“The map is not the territory.” - Alfred Korzybski.

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FALSE IDEAS
“Humans can be literally poisoned by false ideas and false teachings. Many people have a just horror at the thought of putting poison into tea or coffee, but seem unable to realize that, when they teach false ideas and false doctrines, they are poisoning the time-binding capacity of their fellow men and women.” - Alfred Korzybski.

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ANTI-REASON
“Nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of non-thought.” - Milan Kundera.

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RESPONSIBILITY / IGNORANCE
“A man is responsible for his ignorance.” - Milan Kundera,

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TRUTH / SECRECY
“Truth is literally that which is without secrecy, what discloses itself without a veil.” - R.D. Laing

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TRUTH / LIE
“The naked truth is always better than the best-dressed lie.” - Ann Landers.

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GOD HYPOTHESIS

"I had no need of that hypothesis." - Pierre-Simon Laplace

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FACTS / IMAGINATION
“We must trust to nothing but facts: These are presented to us by Nature, and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.

Imagination, on the contrary, which is ever wandering beyond the bounds of truth, joined to self-love and that self-confidence we are so apt to indulge, prompt us to draw conclusions which are not immediately derived from facts.” - Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier.

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HYPOTHESES / CERTAINTY
“Well, Sergeant, specifically of course we can know nothing — unqualified — but like the rest of us, I've fenced my life with a scaffolding of more or less speculative hypotheses.” - T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia).

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PRAYER
“Prayer is merely superstition. The faithful place their trust in an invisible being to change the course of events while conveniently ignoring their day-to-day experience, which tells them that life’s occurrences are purely indiscriminate and circumstantial.” - Tony Lee.

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SUPERSTITION
“The fear of questioning one’s belief is superstition at its worst and the major stumbling block to freedom of thought.” - Tony Lee.

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DOUBT / KNOWLEDGE
“Doubt is not below knowledge but above it.” - Alain-René Lesage.

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FACTS
“Facts are stubborn things.” - Alain-René Lesage.

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TOLD / SEEN
“You’d be surprised what people will accept once you insist two or three times running that they have seen what you tell them they have seen.”- Andrew Levkoff.

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MIXED METAPHORS
“The cure for mixed metaphors, I have always found, is for the patient to be obliged to draw a picture of the result.” - Bernard Levin.

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EUPHEMISMS ARE LIES
“All euphemisms are lies. They are lies told for a particular purpose, and that purpose is to change reality. But no man can change reality, particularly by doing no more than wave a word at it. Then why the pretence? Because reality is very often painful, and it is the very bedrock and foundation of our world that no one should be obliged to suffer pain. Nor, the rule continues, shall anyone be obliged to suffer poverty, ill-health, disappointment, loss, bad luck, failure or an ugly face; since there is no way of avoiding all these, or for that matter any of them, we change their names, and think we have abolished them.” - Bernard Levin.

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SCIENCE / WORLD VIEW
“Racism, as we would characterize it today, was explicit in the writings of virtually all the major anthropologists of the first decades of this century, simply because it was the generally accepted world view.” - Roger Lewin.

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SCIENCE / CORROBORATION
“In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation.” - Carolus Linnæus.

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DEGRADED COMMUNICATION
“When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic.” - Walter Lippmann.

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REASON / FAITH
“I find every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, "It is a matter of faith, and above reason." - John Locke.

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UNDER-LABOURER / RUBBISH
“It is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge.” - John Locke.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Underlabourer

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UNDERSTANDING / IGNORANCE
“If understanding followed no rule at all, there would be no good in the understanding nor in the matter understood, and to remain in ignorance would be the greatest good.” - Ramon Llull.

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FORCED RELIGION
“If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences.” - H.P. Lovecraft.

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RELIGIOUS FEELINGS
“Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity.” - H.P. Lovecraft.

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OPINION / INFORMATION
“No man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about.” - H.P. Lovecraft.

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FALSE DREAMS
“But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travelers notoriously false?” - H.P. Lovecraft.

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