“One of the conditions for the advancement of a society is having someone opposing and questioning every achievement. This is how a society creates a positive struggle that will lead to a positive change”

Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/exclusive-interview-with-_37_b_11591236 During an interview (December 6 2017)

[A]ujourd'hui … [i]l est question, pour la première fois depuis l'existence des sociétés, d'organiser un système tout-à-fait nouveau, de remplacer le céleste par le terrestre, le vague par le positif, le poétique par le réel.
L'Industrie, as quoted in L'Ami de la Religion et du Roi: journal ecclésiastique, politique et littéraire, No. 336 (29 October 1817)

Source: Political Liberalism (1993), p. 6

Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions (2014), Ch. 1 : Are People Stupid?

As quoted in page 184 of book Thapa Politics in Nepal: With Special Reference to Bhim Sen Thapa, 1806–1839 https://books.google.com.np/books?id=7PP1yElRzIUC&dq=bhimsen+thapa&source=gbs_navlinks_s|

Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 31
Context: How much could I tell them? How much dared I tell them? What was the point at which acceptance would begin to yield to doubt? For the mind must be prepared for knowledge as one prepares a field for planting, and a discovery made too soon is no better than a discovery not made at all. Had I been a Christian, I would undoubtedly have been considered a heretic, for what the world has always needed is more heretics and less authority. There can be no order or progress without discipline, but authority can be quite different. Authority, in this world in which I moved, implied belief in and acceptance of a dogma, and dogma is invariably wrong, as knowledge is always in a state of transition. The radical ideas of today are often the conservative policies of tomorrow, and dogma is left protesting by the wayside.  Each generation has a group that wishes to impose a static pattern on events, a static pattern that would hold society forever immobile in a position favorable to the group in question. <!--
Much of the conflict in the minds and arguments of those about me was due to a basic conflict between religious doctrines based primarily upon faith, and Greek philosophy, which was an attempt to interpret experience by reason. Or so it seemed to me, a man with much to learn.

January 6, 2004, World Bank Video Series, Amman, Jordan.