“the strange ideas we derive today will one day be our celebrated truths”
Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol
Source: The Lost Symbol
Source: The Lost Symbol
“the strange ideas we derive today will one day be our celebrated truths”
Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol
Source: The Lost Symbol
Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist
Source: Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998), p. 262.
Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist
Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
G. K. Chesterton book What I Saw in America
"The Future of Democracy" http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/what-i-saw-in-america/19/ <br class="br">What I Saw in America (1922) <br class="br">Context: The last hundred years has seen a general decline in the democratic idea. If there be anybody left to whom this historical truth appears a paradox, it is only because during that period nobody has been taught history, least of all the history of ideas. If a sort of intellectual inquisition had been established, for the definition and differentiation of heresies, it would have been found that the original republican orthodoxy had suffered more and more from secessions, schisms, and backslidings. The highest point of democratic idealism and conviction was towards the end of the eighteenth century, when the American Republic was 'dedicated to the proposition that all men are equal.' It was then that the largest number of men had the most serious sort of conviction that the political problem could be solved by the vote of peoples instead of the arbitrary power of princes and privileged orders.
“Parachuting has taught us to be strong, and only those are needed by our country”
Stanisław Sosabowski (1892–1967) Polish general
Stanisław Sosabowski (1957) Najkrótszą drogą (Through the shortest way) London : Committe of Polish Parachutists.
“Science has taught us that what we see and touch is not what is really there.”
Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist
Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 5, Abstraction, Beyond concrete reality, p. 35
Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) Founder and 1st Governor General of Pakistan
Broadcast to the people of the United States of America on Pakistan (February 1948), as quoted in "Jinnah dreamt of a secular Pakistan" in New Religion (11 February 2013) http://www.newreligion.eu/2013/02/jinnahs-dream-can-still-save-pakistan.html <br class="br">Context: The constitution of Pakistan has yet to be framed by the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. I do not know what the ultimate shape of this constitution is going to be, but I am sure that it will be of a democratic type, embodying the essential principle of Islam. Today, they are as applicable in actual life as they were 1,300 years ago. Islam and its idealism have taught us democracy. It has taught equality of man, justice and fairplay to everybody. We are the inheritors of these glorious traditions and are fully alive to our responsibilities and obligations as framers of the future constitution of Pakistan. In any case Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic State to be ruled by priests with a divine mission. We have many non-Muslims — Hindus, Christians, and Parsis — but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and privileges as any other citizens and will play their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan.
“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”
Pema Chödron (1936) American philosopher
John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician
Part 3 “Four Psycho-Mathematical Arguments”, Chapter 4 “The Universality Argument (and the Relevance of Morality and Mathematics)” (p. 131)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)