“I think making mistakes and discovering them for yourself is of great value.”
Interview for the Academy of Achievement, 1999
Source: Song of Myself
“I think making mistakes and discovering them for yourself is of great value.”
Interview for the Academy of Achievement, 1999
“People are usually surprised to discover that I hate the phrase "constitutional rights."”
I hate the phrase because it is terribly misleading. Most of the people who say it or hear it have the impression that the Constitution "grants" them their rights. Nothing could be further from the truth. Strictly speaking it is the Bill of Rights that enumerates our rights, but none of our founding documents bestow anything on you at all [...] The government can burn the Constitution and shred the Bill of Rights, but those actions wouldn't have the slightest effect on the rights you've always had.
Source: Good to be King (2004)
“The usual masculine dissillusionment is discovering that a woman has a brain”
“Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.”
§ 12
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius
“Blasphemy is what an old mistake says of a newly discovered truth.”
The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: Blasphemy is what an old mistake says of a newly discovered truth.
Blasphemy is what a withered last year's leaf says to a this year's bud.
Blasphemy is the bulwark of religious prejudice.
Blasphemy is the breastplate of the heartless.
And let me say now, that the crime of blasphemy, as set out in this statute, is impossible. No man can blaspheme a book. No man can commit blasphemy by telling his honest thought. No man can blaspheme a God, or a Holy Ghost, or a Son of God. The Infinite cannot be blasphemed.
“Usually, it is man who attacks; as for me, I defend myself, and I often capitulate.”
On his numerous mistresses, as quoted in The True Story of the Empress Eugénie (1921) by Guy Jean Raoul Eugène Charles Emmanuel de Savoie-Carignan Soissons, Ccomte de Soissons
Variant translation: It is usually the man who attacks. As for me, I defend myself, and I often capitulate.
As quoted in The Mistresses : Domestic Scandals of the 19th-Century Monarchs (1966) by E. Cobham Brewer
“When a new building block is discovered, the result is usually a range of innovations.”
Source: Hidden Order - How Adaptation Builds Complexity (1995), Ch 2. Adaptive Systems, p. 62
Letter to Baader in The element of madness, July 12, 2009, Perlentaucher Medien GmbH, February 22, 2010 http://www.signandsight.com/features/1964.html,