“Ignorance is the mother of Devotion: A maxim that is proverbial, and confirmed by general experience. Look out for a people, entirely destitute of religion: If you find them at all, be assured, that they are but few degrees removed from brutes. What so pure as some of the morals, included in some theological system? What so corrupt as some of the practices, to which these systems give rise?”

— David Hume, The Natural History of Religion

Part XV - General corollary
The Natural History of Religion (1757)

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David Hume138

Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian 1711–1776

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“From the comparison of theism and idolatry, we may form some other observations, which will also confirm the vulgar observation that the corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.”

David Hume The Natural History of Religion

Part X - With regard to courage or abasement
The Natural History of Religion (1757)

“...what I look to with seriousness is the Phalanx of Party which exists in the body of the dissenters, who are, at the very least, nine tenths of them entirely devoted, some with greater some with less zeal, to the principles of the French Revolution.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to the Home Secretary, Henry Dundas (30 September 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 419
1790s

“Every experiment destroys some of the knowledge of the system which was obtained by previous experiments.”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

"Critique of the Physical Concepts of the Corpuscular Theory" in The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory (1930) as translated by Carl Eckhart and Frank C. Hoyt, p. 20; also in "The Uncertainty Principle" in The World of Mathematics : A Small Library of the Literature of Mathematics (1956) by James Roy Newman, p. 1051

“I cannot help observing, that many of those who have written in support of our ancient system of jurisprudence, the growth of the wisdom of man for so many ages, are not as they are alleged by some to be men writing from their closets without any knowledge of the affairs of life, but persons mixing with the mass of society, and capable of receiving practical experience of the soundness of the maxims they inculcate.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

King v. Waddington (1800), 1 East, 157.

“Though the framework is libertarian and laissez-faire, individual communities within it need not be, and perhaps no community within it will choose to be so. Thus, the characteristics of the framework need not pervade the individual communities. In this laissez-faire system it could turn out that though they are permitted, there are no actually functioning "capitalist" institutions; or that some communities have them and others don't or some communities have some of them, or what you will.”

Robert Nozick (1938–2002) American political philosopher

Source: (1974), Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework as Utopian Common Ground, p. 320

“Nations are represented not merely as self-centered, independent moral systems, but as, in some degree, mutually repellent systems. This notion is partly the product of the false patriotic teaching of our schools and press, which seek to feed our sense of national unity more upon exclusive than inclusive sentiments. Nations are represented as rivals and competitors in some struggle for power, or greatness, or prestige, instead of as coöperators in the general advance of civilization.”

J.A. Hobson (1858–1940) English economist, social scientist and critic of imperialism

p, 125
The Morals of Economic Irrationalism (1920)

“A final moral concerns terminology. Why did such serious people take so seriously axioms which now seem so arbitrary? I suspect that they were misled by the pernicious misuse of the word ‘measurement’ in contemporary theory. This word very strongly suggests the ascertaining of some preexisting property of some thing, any instrument involved playing a purely passive role. Quantum experiments are just not like that, as we learned especially from Bohr. The results have to be regarded as the joint product of ‘system’ and ‘apparatus,’ the complete experimental set-up.”

John S. Bell (1928–1990) Northern Irish physicist

"On the impossible pilot wave" (1982), included in Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (1987), p. 166

“In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads.”

Galileo Galilei book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

Source: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), p. 322
Context: In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads. Such arguments in support of their fixed idea as they hit upon themselves or hear set forth by others, no matter how simple and stupid these may be, gain their instant acceptance and applause. On the other hand whatever is brought forward against it, however ingenious and conclusive, they receive with disdain or with hot rage — if indeed it does not make them ill. Beside themselves with passion, some of them would not be backward even about scheming to suppress and silence their adversaries.

“Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don’t give a damn.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“We must find out what's wrong here. Either we are victims of some ghastly experiment — or we're all monsters!”

Brian W. Aldiss book Outside

Outside (1955)
Context: "There's a way outside. We're — we've got to find out what we are." His voice rose to an hysterical pitch. He was shaking Calvin again. "We must find out what's wrong here. Either we are victims of some ghastly experiment — or we're all monsters!"

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