“Neither Capitalism nor Socialism can pretend to be an ideology. They are merely methods for dividing ownership and income. What is most peculiar for such theoretically practical methodologies, which are also theoretically opposed to each other, is that neither of them has ever existed, except in a highly tentative form. And even then they are invariably mixed together. Their mutually exclusive vocabularies have more to do with basic similarities than with differences.”

— John Ralston Saul

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

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

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John Ralston Saul 85

Canadian author and essayist 1947

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“It is easy to see that this problem can be solved neither in theoretical nor in practical philosophy, but only in a higher discipline, which is the link that combines them, and neither theoretical nor practical, but both at once.”

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) German philosopher (idealism)

System of Transcendental Philosophy (1800)

“Different methodologies express different rationalities stemming from alternative theoretical positions which they reflect. These alternative positions must be respected, and methodologies and their appropriate theoretical underpinnings developed in partnership.”

Robert L. Flood (1959) British organizational scientist

Source: Creative Problem Solving (1991), p. 47-48; As cited in: Steve Clarke (2001) " Mixing Methods for Organisational Intervention: Background and Current Status http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/steve-clarke-paper.pdf"

Mike Jackson (1951) systems scientist

Source: Creative Problem Solving: Total Systems Intervention (1991), p. 47-48; As cited in: Steve Clarke (2001) " Mixing Methods for Organisational Intervention: Background and Current Status http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/steve-clarke-paper.pdf"

“[Critical social science attempts] to determine when theoretical statements grasp invariant regularities of social action as such and when they express ideologically frozen relations of dependence that can in principle be transformed.”

Jürgen Habermas book Knowledge and Human Interests

Source: Knowledge and Human Interests, 1971, p. 310 as cited in: Dominick LaCapra (1983) Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language. p. 170

“There is a difference between the theoretical knowledge of socialism and the practical life of socialism. People are not born socialists, but must first be taught how to become them.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

“German Volksgenossen!” Hitler’s opening speech at the new Winterhilfswerk, Deutschlandhalle, Berlin (October 5, 1937). Also quoted in The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh https://books.google.com/books?id=l5gcZpnL5QUC&pg=PA224
1930s

“I reject, as you know, the "philosophy of Marxism," dialectical materialism….The general Marxian theory of "universal history," to the extent that it has any empirical content, seems to me disproved by modern historical and anthropological investigation.Marxian economics seems to me for the most part either false or obsolete or meaningless in application to contemporary economic phenomena. Those aspects of Marxian economics which retain validity do not seem to me to justify the theoretical structure of the economics.Not only do I believe it meaningless to say that "socialism is inevitable" and false that socialism is "the only alternative to capitalism"; I consider that on the basis of the evidence now available to us a new form of exploitive society (which I call "managerial society") is not only possible but is a more probable outcome of the present than socialism….On no ideological, theoretic or political ground, then, can I recognize, or do I feel, any bond or allegiance to the Workers Party (or to any other Marxist party). That is simply the case, and I can no longer pretend about it, either to myself or to others.”

James Burnham (1905–1987) American philosopher

Burnham's Letter of Resignation, 1940

“The essences of the Gods never came into existence (for that which always is never comes into existence; and that exists for ever which possesses primary force and by nature suffers nothing): neither do they consist of bodies; for even in bodies the powers are incorporeal. Neither are they contained by space; for that is a property of bodies. Neither are they separate from the first cause nor from one another, just as thoughts are not separate from mind nor acts of knowledge from the soul.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

II. That God is unchanging, unbegotten, eternal, incorporeal, and not in space.
Variant translation:
The essences of the gods are neither generated; for eternal natures are without generation; and those beings are eternal who possess a first power, and are naturally void of passivity. Nor are their essences composed from bodies; for even the powers of bodies are incorporeal: nor are they comprehended in place; for this is the property of bodies: nor are they separated from the first cause, or from each other; in the same manner as intellections are not separated from intellect, nor sciences from the soul.
II. That a God is immutable, without Generation, eternal, incorporeal, and has no Subsistence in Place, as translated by Thomas Taylor
On the Gods and the Cosmos

“One important idea is that science is a means whereby learning is achieved, not by mere theoretical speculation on the one hand, nor by the undirected accumulation of practical facts on the other, but rather by a motivated iteration between theory and practice.”

George E. P. Box (1919–2013) British statistician

Source: Science and Statistics (1976), p. 791

“There are neither graves nor death in Nature; there are various forms of existence, some of which enable us to be chemists, others only chemical substances.”

Bolesław Prus book The Doll

The Doll

“From a theoretical point of view, lifetime income would be ideal, but the practical problems in estimating it are enormous.”

Harvey S. Rosen (1949) American economist

Source: Public Finance - International Edition - Sixth Edition, Chapter 6, Political Economy, p. 140

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John Ralston Saul 85

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