Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist
1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)
Source: The Epistemology of Social Science (2011), p. 87.
Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist
1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)
Talal Abu-Ghazaleh (1938) Jordanian businesspeople
May 23, 2005, at the Eighth Session of the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development, Palais de Nations, Geneva, Switzerland.
Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
“Scientific research is not conducted in a social vacuum.”
Robert K. Merton (1910–2003) American sociologist
Source: Social structure and anomie (1938), p. 263 (1973 Edition)
Peter Agre (1949) American chemist, recipient of Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Peter Agre's speech at the Nobel Banquet http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2003/agre-speech-e.html, December 10, 2003
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)
Context: There is something wrong with our world, something fundamentally and basically wrong. I don't think we have to look too far to see that. I'm sure that most of you would agree with me in making that assertion. And when we stop to analyze the cause of our world's ills, many things come to mind. We begin to wonder if it is due to the fact that we don't know enough. But it can't be that. Because in terms of accumulated knowledge we know more today than men have known in any period of human history. We have the facts at our disposal. We know more about mathematics, about science, about social science, and philosophy than we've ever known in any period of the world's history. So it can't be because we don't know enough. And then we wonder if it is due to the fact that our scientific genius lags behind. That is, if we have not made enough progress scientifically. Well then, it can't be that. For our scientific progress over the past years has been amazing. Man through his scientific genius has been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains, so that today it's possible to eat breakfast in New York City and supper in London, England. Back in about 1753 it took a letter three days to go from New York City to Washington, and today you can go from here to China in less time than that. It can't be because man is stagnant in his scientific progress. Man's scientific genius has been amazing. I think we have to look much deeper than that if we are to find the real cause of man's problems and the real cause of the world's ills today. If we are to really find it I think we will have to look in the hearts and souls of men.
“… one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking.”
Aldous Huxley book Crome Yellow
Source: Crome Yellow
Maurice Allais (1911–2010) French economist; 1988 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics
L'anisotropie de l'espace. La nécessaire révision de certains postulats des théories contemporaines. Les données de l'expérience (1997), p. 591
David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary
Part I, Essay 23: Of The Standard of Taste
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)
Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher
"Seventh Talk in Poona, 10 October 1948" http://www.jkrishnamurti.com/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=295&chid=4625&w=%22To+understand+oneself%22, J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. 481010; Vol. V, p. 128 <br class="br">Posthumous publications, The Collected Works <br class="br">Context: To understand oneself, one needs enormous pliability, and that pliability is denied when we specialize in devotion, in action, in knowledge. There are no paths such as devotion, as action, as knowledge, and he who follows any of these paths separately as a specialist brings about his own destruction. That is, a man who is committed to a particular path, to a particular approach, is incapable of pliability, and that which is not pliable is broken. As a tree that is not pliable breaks in the storm, so a man who has specialized breaks down in moments of crisis.