Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America
Book One, Chapter II.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book One
“By a merciful dispensation of Providence university training is almost as costly as it is unprofitable. The majority will thus be always unable to afford it, and will base their opinions on mother wit and current opinion rather than on demonstration.”
Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)
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Karlheinz Deschner (1924–2014) German writer and activist
Ich will lieber mit den meisten irren als auf meine Weise. So dachte Augustinus. Ich denke umgekehrt. <br class="br"> deschner.info http://www.deschner.info/de/person/zitate.htm
Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science
"The Importance of Critical Discussion" in On the Barricades: Religion and Free Inquiry in Conflict (1989) by Robert Basil
Context: There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions. … It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.
Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist
" Energized Enthusiasm : A Note On Theurgy http://www.the-equinox.org/vol1/no9/eqi09005.html" in The Equinox Vol. 1 no. 9 (Spring 1913) http://www.the-equinox.org/vol1/no9/index.html. <br class="br">Context: I am certainly of opinion that genius can be acquired, or, in the alternative, that it is an almost universal possession. Its rarity may be attributed to the crushing influence of a corrupted society. It is rare to meet a youth without high ideals, generous thoughts, a sense of holiness, of his own importance, which, being interpreted, is, of his own identity with God. Three years in the world, and he is a bank clerk or even a government official. Only those who intuitively understand from early boyhood that they must stand out, and who have the incredible courage and endurance to do so in the face of all that tyranny, callousness, and the scorn of inferiors can do; only these arrive at manhood uncontaminated.
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Interview with the New York Times (29 October 1973)
Other speeches and writings
A. N. Wilson (1950) English writer
A. N. Wilson, as quoted in The Guardian (30 September 1989); also in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993) by Robert Andrews, p. 6.
Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism
1850
1850s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1850s
“It's almost as if our society values opinion more than it values knowledge.”
Hank Green (1980) American vlogger
Japan's Nuclear Disaster Explained http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBvUtY0PfB8 <br class="br">Youtube
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Source: Introduction to 1961 edition of Sceptical Essays (1961)
“The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion.”
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist
Lectures on Education delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London, 1855, published in "What Knowledge is of Most Worth", The Westminster Review (July 1859) volume CXLI, p. 1-23, at p. 19 http://books.google.com/books?id=5NQ6AQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA19 <br class="br">Context: The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion. … Think you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses any thing in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning? Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake does not suggest higher associations to one who has seen through a microscope the wondrously varied and elegant forms of snow-crystals? Think you that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million years ago? The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.