
“Learn to say 'no' to the good so you can say 'yes' to the best.”
Part XII - With regard to doubt or conviction
The Natural History of Religion (1757)
“Learn to say 'no' to the good so you can say 'yes' to the best.”
“Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?”
Source: The Winter of Our Discontent
[Michael Pollan: Why the family meal is crucial to civilisation, Sat 25 May 2013, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/may/25/michael-pollan-family-meal-civilisation, 2018-05-23]
"I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards of this planet" http://www.csuchico.edu/zapatist/HTML/Archive/Communiques/etaJAN.html January, 2003
Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)
Context: Of what use is musical knowledge? Here is one idea. Each child spends endless days in curious ways; we call this play. A child stacks and packs all kinds of blocks and boxes, lines them up, and knocks them down. … Clearly, the child is learning about space!... how on earth does one learn about time? Can one time fit inside another? Can two of them go side by side? In music, we find out!
As quoted in Nest of Spies : America's Journey to Disaster in Iran (1989) by Amir Taheri, p. 269. Disputed by historian Shaul Bakhash.
Disputed