
“To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.”
Section 220
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1938), p. 16
“To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.”
Section 220
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
Source: The Road Ahead (1995), p. 265 in hardcover edition, corrected in paperback
“Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.”
“The conclusions of most good operations research studies are obvious.”
Cited in: Paul Dickson (1999) The official rules and explanations. p. 14
Machol named this the "Billings Phenomenon". Dickson explains: "The name refers to a well-known Billings story in which a farmer becomes concerned that his black horses are eating more than his white horses. He does a detailed study of the situation and finds that he has more black horses than white horses, Machol points out."
Principles of Operations Research (1975)
Preface to The Right To Be Greedy (1983 edition)
Context: The individualists have only worshipped their whims. The point, however, is to live them. Is this a put-on, a piece of parlor preciosity? There is more than a touch of that here. Or a mushminded exercise in incongruous eclecticism? The individualist egoist is bound to be skeptical, but he should not be too quick to deprive himself of the insights (and the entertainment!) of this unique challenge to his certitudes. The contradictions are obvious, but whether they derive from the authors’ irrationality or from their fidelity to the real quality of lived experience is not so easy to say. If "Marxism-Stirnerism" is conceivable, every orthodoxy prating of freedom or liberation is called into question, anarchism included. The only reason to read this book, as its authors would be the first to agree, is for what you can get out of it.
stick in one's mind, and that certain lines, certain courses of events, certain ways of behaving, become adequate symbols for what goes on in the Christian system of ideas. … I keep myself supplied with my own angels and demons...
Torsten Manns interview.
Bergman on Bergman (1970)
“There are many ways to drown, only the most obvious wave their arms as they're going under.”
Source: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
Source: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life