“Cease therefore to be dismayed by the mere novelty and so to reject reason from your mind with loathing: weigh the questions rather with keen judgment and if they seem to you to be true, surrender, or if the thing is false, gird yourself to the encounter.”

—  Lucretius

Book II, lines 1040–1043 (tr. Munro)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

Original

Desine qua propter novitate exterritus ipsa expuere ex animo rationem, sed magis acri iudicio perpende, et si tibi vera videntur, dede manus, aut, si falsum est, accingere contra.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Cease therefore to be dismayed by the mere novelty and so to reject reason from your mind with loathing: weigh the ques…" by Lucretius?
Lucretius photo
Lucretius 45
Roman poet and philosopher -94–-55 BC

Related quotes

Leonardo Da Vinci photo
George W. Bush photo

“The United States will not retreat from the world, and we will never surrender to evil. America rejects the false comfort of isolationism.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2006, State of the Union (January 2006)
Context: But our enemies and our friends can be certain. The United States will not retreat from the world, and we will never surrender to evil. America rejects the false comfort of isolationism. We are the nation that saved liberty in Europe, and liberated death camps, and helped raise up democracies, and faced down an evil empire. Once again, we accept the call of history to deliver the oppressed, and move this world toward peace. We remain on the offensive against terror networks. We have killed or captured many of their leaders — and for the others, their day will come.

Joseph Joubert photo

“To draw up in advance an exact and detailed plan is to deprive our minds of the pleasures of the encounter and the novelty that comes from executing the work.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Context: To draw up in advance an exact and detailed plan is to deprive our minds of the pleasures of the encounter and the novelty that comes from executing the work. It is to make the execution insipid for us and consequently impossible in works that depends on enthusiasm and imagination. Such a plan is itself a half-work. It must be left imperfect if we want to please ourselves. We must say it cannont be finished. In fact, it must not be for a very good reason: it is impossible. We can, however, draw up such plans for works whose execution and accomplishment are a mechanical thing, a thing that depends above all others on the hand. This is suitable and even very useful for painters, for sculptors. Their senses, with each stroke of the brush or chisel, will find this novelty that did not exist for their minds. Forms and colors, which the imagination cannot represent to us as perfectly as the eye can, will offer the artist a horde of these encounters which are indispensable to giving genius pleasure in work. But the orator, the poet, and the philosopher will not find the same encouragement in writing down what they have already thought. Everything is one for them. Because the words they use have beauty only for the mind and, having been spoken in their head in the same way they are written on the page, the mind no longer has anything to discover in what it wants to say. A plan, however is necessary, but a plan that is vague, that has not been pinned down. We must have above all the notion of the beginning, the end, and the middle of our work. That is to say, we must choose its pitch and range, its pauses, and its objectives. The first word must give the color, the beginning determines the tone; the middle rules the measure, the time, the space, and the proportions.

Cheryl Strayed photo
Basil of Caesarea photo
Frédéric Chopin photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“So you must ask this question, put this question to yourself, whether your mind can be empty of all its past and yet retain the technological knowledge, your engineering knowledge, your linguistic knowledge, the memory of all that, and yet function from a mind that is completely empty.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Source: 1970s, Krishnamurti in India, 1970-71 (1971), p. 56
Context: So you must ask this question, put this question to yourself, whether your mind can be empty of all its past and yet retain the technological knowledge, your engineering knowledge, your linguistic knowledge, the memory of all that, and yet function from a mind that is completely empty. The emptying of that mind comes about naturally, sweetly without bidding, when you understand yourself, when you understand what you are. What you are is the memory, bundle of memories, experiences, thoughts. When you understand that, look at it, observe it; and when you observe it, see in that observation that there is no duality between the observer and the observed; then when you see that, you will see that your mind can be completely empty, attentive, and in that attention you can act wholly, without any fragmentation.

Peter F. Hamilton photo
Baruch Spinoza photo

Related topics