Quotes about doubt (5301 quotes, page 24)

“”Jewish Peril” exposed.
Historic “Fake.”
Details of the forgery.
More parallels.
We published yesterday an article from our Constantinople Correspondent, which showed that the notorious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” – one of the mysteries of politics since 1905 – were a clumsy forgery, the text being based on a book published in French in 1865. The book, without title page, was obtained by our correspondent from a Russian source, and we were able to identify it with a complete copy in the British Museum.
The disclosure, which naturally aroused the greatest interest among those familiar with Jewish questions, finally disposes of the “Protocols” as credible evidence of a Jewish plot against civilization.
We publish below a second article, which gives further close parallels between the language of the Protocols and that attributed to Machiavelli and Montesquieu in the volume dated from Geneva.
Plagiarism at Work.
(From our Constantinople Correspondent.)
While the Geneva Dialogue open with an exchange of compliments between Monsequieu and Machiavelli, which covers seven pages, the author of the Protocols plunges at once in medias res.
One can imagine him hastily turning over those first seven pages of the book which he has been ordered to paraphrase against time, and angrily ejaculating, “Nothing here.” But on page 8 of the Dialogues he finds what he wants.
Publisher: Good work Graves…we finally paid your émigré £ 300 for it…now if we can find Golovinski and get his confession…
Graves: He joined the Bolsheviks.
Golovinski became a party ‘’’activist’’’ and rose to be an adviser to Trotsky. But he ‘’’died’’’ last year!
Publisher: Well, that’s that!
Publisher: Oh but Graves, “The Times” is influential… after our expose we’ll probably hear no more of this fraud!
Graves: I’m not sure!
Anti-Bolsheviks, White Russians, published thousands of copies! Here’s a page from Nilus’ “The Great in the Small.”
Publisher: Astonishing…mystical symbols…eh?
The “Protocols” quickly began to circulate around the world.
A French edition this year…and in America Henry Ford, the auto magnate, has been serializing it in his paper, the “Dearborn independent”!
Publisher: When did it first appear in Europe?
Graves: The German edition…dated 1919, was the first!
This is an evil book…a fake designed to malign a whole group of people.
Publisher: I know, I know! …Ugly stuff, Graves.
Graves: Well, what are we to do about it?
Publisher: Your report exposed it as a foul fraud!
Publisher: Y’forget the power of the press, graves! “The Times” has tremendous worldwide influence.
This fraud will soon be well known everywhere…so, my boy, ‘’’what harm can the “protocols” possibly do now?”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 91-94

People , Books , World , Imagination

“The agitator must stand outside of organizations, with no bread to earn, no candidate to elect, no party to save, no object but truth — to tear a question open and riddle it with light.”

Wendell Phillips (1811–1884) American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer

1880s, The Scholar in a Republic (1881)

Truth , Tear , Light

“I thought fit to… explain in detail in the same book the peculiarity of a certain method, by which it will be possible… to investigate some of the problems in mathematics by means of mechanics. This procedure is… no less useful even for the proof of the theorems themselves; for certain things first became clear to me by a mechanical method, although they had to be demonstrated by geometry afterwards… But it is of course easier, when we have previously acquired, by the method, some knowledge of the questions, to supply the proof than it is to find it without any previous knowledge.”

Archimedes book The Method of Mechanical Theorems

The Method of Mechanical Theorems

Books , Mathematics , Knowledge , Problem

“Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.”

Hannah Arendt book Men in Dark Times

Men in Dark Times (1968).

“It's fascinating to watch a show develop from a script to a 22-minute comedy. I try to learn as much, and ask as many questions, as I can without being annoying.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (1981) American actor, director, producer, and writer

The Hollywood Reporter November 7, 1995.

Learning

“The question here is the same as the question I addressed with regard to madness, disease, delinquency and sexuality. In all of these cases, it was not a question of showing how these objects were for a long time hidden before being finally discovered, nor of showing how all these objects are only wicked illusions or ideological products to be dispelled in the light of reason finally having reached its zenith. It was a matter of showing by what conjunctions a whole set of practices—from the moment they become coordinated with a regime of truth—was able to make what does not exist (madness, disease, delinquency, sexuality, etcetera), nonetheless become something.”

Michel Foucault book The Birth of Biopolitics

Lecture 1, January 10, 1979, p. 19
The Birth of Biopolitics (1978)

Truth , Disease , Light , Time

“Oh, that's a good question because what I would consider essential may be different than what my record company and the fans might have in mind. But when you do a retrospective of 20 years like this (album) and realize that you had so many hit singles, it's really an honor. There's a couple of songs that I wrote, one is called "Along Came You" for my daughter Emily; and the other, "Nayib's Song (I Am Here for Your) for my son. Both are in the 'slow disc.' I put them in even if they were not singles or hits because for me my being a mother is an essesntial part of who I am."”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

answer to question "The title of your new album is "The Essential Gloria Estefan. What is the essential Gloria Estefan?"
2006

Parting , Daughters

“If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?”

Jane Wagner (1935) Playwright, actress

Other material for Lily Tomlin

Funny , Cute , Valentine's Day , Wedding

“Okay, we will divide the first [of two questions] and let the second die a crib death.”

Tony Snow (1955–2008) American White House Press Secretary

White House Press Briefing http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060706-2.html (2006-07-06).

Death

“[In response to this question by Bill Moyers: What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate? ] "It's going to destroy it all. I use what I call my bathroom metaphor. If two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, then both have what I call freedom of the bathroom, go to the bathroom any time you want, and stay as long as you want to for whatever you need. And this to my way is ideal. And everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the Constitution. But if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up, you have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door, aren't you through yet, and so on. And in the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Interview by Bill Moyers on Bill Moyers' World Of Ideas (17 October 1988); transcript http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/print/pdfs/woi%20asimov1.pdf (page 6) - audio (20:12) http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/media_players/asimovwoi_audio.html
General sources

Life , People , World , Way

“The polls are the place where Politicians claim the lime-light. They fulminate with garnished oratory, display inherent and affected charm and poise and ingenuity in tackling hecklers and evading responses to tricky questions and acquire the knack of telling an untruth with utmost conviction.”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Politicians

Light

“Croft had an instinctive knowledge of land, sensed the stresses and torsions that had first erupted it, the abrasions of wind and water. The platoon had long ceased to question any direction he took; they knew he would be right as infallibly as sun after darkness or fatigue after a long march.”

Norman Mailer book The Naked and the Dead

Pt. 3, Ch. 10
The Naked and the Dead (1948)

Knowledge , Sense , Water , Sun

“For instance, if you have by a lie hindered a man who is even now planning a murder, you are legally responsible for all the consequences. But if you have strictly adhered to the truth, public justice can find no fault with you, be the unforeseen consequence what it may. It is possible that whilst you have honestly answered Yes to the murderer’s question, whether his intended victim is in the house, the latter may have gone out unobserved, and so not have come in the way of the murderer, and the deed therefore have not been done; whereas, if you lied and said he was not in the house, and he had really gone out (though unknown to you) so that the murderer met him as he went, and executed his purpose on him, then you might with justice be accused as the cause of his death. For, if you had spoken the truth as well as you knew it, perhaps the murderer while seeking for his enemy in the house might have been caught by neighbours coming up and the deed been prevented.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives (1797)

Death , Truth , Lie , Justice

“In the beginning let's say Weather Report was a joint thing. Then, after the second album there's no question about it, it became more and more my group. Wayne wanted it like that, but we were always 'partners in crime.”

Joe Zawinul (1932–2007) austrian composer and pianist

No Wayne, no Weather Report.
As quoted in Nicholson, Stuart. "Jazz-Rock: A History". Schirmer Books. 1998.

Weather

“Some people feel concerned about the commercialism of the press. They note that great newspapers are great business enterprises earning large profits and controlled by men of wealth. So they fear that in such control the press may tend to support the private interests of those who own the papers, rather than the general interest of the whole people. It seems to me, however, that the real test is not whether the newspapers are controlled by men of wealth, but whether they are sincerely trying to serve the public interests. There will be little occasion for worry about who owns a newspaper, so long as its attitudes on public questions are such as to promote the general welfare. A press which is actuated by the purpose of genuine usefulness to the public interest can never be too strong financially, so long as its strength is used for the support of popular government.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)

Men , People , Fear , Feeling

“That was the line he took, and he did not try to settle the matter of what would be done if universal emancipation came. No intelligent politician tries to raise questions that will divide his followers. He tries to take positions that will unite his followers. And Lincoln did the best that anybody could have possibly done to unite his followers on the questions of principle, which applied directly to the great issue of public policy, which at that time was slavery in the territories. And I think my time is up.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Intelligence , Thinking , Universe , Time

“I am 83 this year and after a lifetime of Jewish activism, I have determined that what I hold to be the greatest Jewish value is our ability to question.”

Edgar Bronfman, Sr. (1929–2013) Canadian-American businessman

http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/2012/10/09/bronfman-why-civil-discourse-is-imperative-for-inter-jewish-dialogue/11782.

“Ever since the last great conflict the world has been putting a renewed emphasis, not on preparation to succeed in war, but on an attempt by preventing war to succeed in peace. This movement has the full and complete approbation of the American Government and the American people. While we have been unwilling to interfere in the political relationship of other countries and have consistently refrained from intervening except when our help has been sought and we have felt that it could be effectively given, we have signified our willingness to become associated with other nations in a practical plan for promoting international justice through the World Court. Such a tribunal furnishes a method of the adjustment of international differences in accordance with our treaty rights and under the generally accepted rules of international law. When questions arise which all parties agree ought to be adjudicated but which do not yield to the ordinary methods of diplomacy, here is a forum to which the parties may voluntarily repair in the consciousness that their dignity suffers no diminution and that their cause will be determined impartially, according to the law and the evidence. That is a sensible, direct, efficient, and practical method of adjusting differences which can not fail to appeal to the intelligence of the American people.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

War , People , World , Peace

“My brothers,
They never went blind for what they did, but I may as well have.
In the name of the Father, the Skeptic and the Son,
I had one more stupid question.”

Alanis Morissette (1974) Canadian-American singer-songwriter

Forgiven
Jagged Little Pill (1995)

Stupidity

“If the States may tax one instrument, employed by the Government in the execution of its powers, they may tax any and every other instrument. They may tax the mail; they may tax the mint; they may tax patent rights; they may tax the papers of the custom house; they may tax judicial process; they may tax all the means employed by the Government to an excess which would defeat all the ends of Government. This was not intended by the American people. They did not design to make their Government dependent on the States. […] If the controlling power of the States be established, if their supremacy as to taxation be acknowledged, what is to restrain their exercising control in any shape they may please to give it? Their sovereignty is not confined to taxation; that is not the only mode in which it might be displayed. The question is, in truth, a question of supremacy, and if the right of the States to tax the means employed by the General Government be conceded, the declaration that the Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land is empty and unmeaning declamation.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 432-433
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)

People , Truth , Law , Exercises

“The decisions we make about the Internet don't affect just the Internet – they are answers to basic questions about the relationship each citizen has to the government and about the extent to which we trust one another with the full range of fundamental rights granted by the Constitution.”

Mike Godwin book Cyber Rights

Cyber Rights — cited in [Hudson, David, Net freedom ring, Salon, Salon Media Group, July 16, 1998, http://www.salon.com/21st/books/1998/07/16books.html, 2009-12-17, http://web.archive.org/web/20000202020328/http://www.salon.com/21st/books/1998/07/16books.html, 2000-02-02]
Cyber Rights

Decision

“Social policy that reunites father and child must always confront itself with the question, “Are we paying dads to stay, or to go away?” If a single mother receives more money when the father isn’t around than when he is around, there will be fewer fathers around. The government will become her substitute husband.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 245.

Money

“Children aren't like that, which is why they look so young, 'cause they always have a sense of style and purpose. When they're walking around, they have a very definite purpose, they're walking. And it's a great walk as well, it's not an adult's sort of bemused shuffle, it's that 'I'm going over here.' And you say 'Why are you going over there?' 'Because I have a harmonica.' 'What are you doing with the harmonica?' 'I'm going to put it in the toilet.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

'Why are you doing tha—' 'Enough questions, goodbye!'
On children's attitude.
Like, Totally (2006)

Children , Sense

“Any minority’s right to be different must be respected, but the right of the majority must not be questioned.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

2011 - 2015

“I have tried to answer the question which sent me to Samoa: Are the disturbances which vex our adolescents due to the nature of adolescence itself or to the civilization? Under different conditions does adolescence present a different picture?”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1920s, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), p. 6-7

Nature

“In the Cambridge mathematical tripods, they said, ’do six questions. Complete questions carry proportionately more marks than an equal number of fragments. Till you attempt half of the questions you won’t get full credit’. Upon declaration of result I found that I had scored 110 out of hundred in one paper, 140 in another and likewise in all the rest. I was confused. So my tutor explained to me that although they write ‘do six questions’, you can attempt as many as you want. They award you marks for whatever questions you answer correctly and the ranks are on basis of the score.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

An Exclusive Interview with Prof. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar

Mathematics

“…the question of civil equality. We have not yet attained to it in this country—far from it. You will not have established it in this land until the child of the poorest parent shall have the same opportunity for receiving the best education as the child of the richest. … It will never established so long as you have 500 men nominated by the lottery of birth to exercise the right of thwarting the wishes of the majority of 40 millions of their countrymen in the determination of the best way of governing the country.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Swansea (1 October 1908), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 50.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Men , Education , Way , Exercises

“Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of fuel. Sentimental people call it inspiration, but what they really mean is fuel. I have always needed fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

2000s, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)

People , Music , Cars , Night

“Why don't I kill myself? If I knew exactly what keeps me from doing so, I should have no more questions to ask myself since I should have answered them all.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The New Gods (1969)

“Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wilderness", p. 200.

“Not every situation requires your patented approach of shoot first, shoot later, shoot some more and then when everybody's dead try to ask a question or two.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Wild Wild West http://www.grantstomb.org/news/gif02.html (1999).
In fiction, Wild Wild West (1999)

Dead

“Two understandings of tradition as well as their relation to one another need to be distinguished here. On the one hand, the conservative sense of tradition against which the new or the modern is unfailingly opposed, and, on the other, tradition as the mark of a seriousness in which an essential questioning takes place.”

David Ferris

"Truth Is the Death of Intention: Benjamin's Esoteric History of Romanticism," Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 31, No. 4, Winter 1992, p. 458

Understanding , Sense

“The non-Christian can put no question which is not necessarily that of the Christian dogmatician as well. … In solidarity with the non-Christian, he has no prior knowledge. He must begin from the very beginning with no presupposed consciousness of God. He must learn to spell out the message which comes to him as to every man.”

Helmut Gollwitzer (1908–1993) German theologian and author

Source: Introduction to Church Dogmatics (1957), p. 11

God , Knowledge , Learning

“Additionally, borrowing a page from U. S. foreign policy, I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile, by bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government. Bombing the Murrah Federal Building was morally and strategically equivalent to the U. S. hitting a government building in Serbia, Iraq, or other nations. Based on observations of the policies of my own government, I viewed this action as an acceptable option. From this perspective, what occurred in Oklahoma City was no different than what Americans rain on the heads of others all the time, and subsequently, my mindset was and is one of clinical detachment. The bombing of the Murrah building was not personal, no more than when Air Force, Army, Navy, or Marine personnel bomb or launch cruise missiles against government installations and their personnel. I hope that this clarification amply addresses your question. Sincerely, Timothy J. McVeigh. USP Terre Haute”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

IN
2000s, Why I Bombed the Murrah Federal Building (2001)

Hostility , Hope , Time , Personality

“"You've killed me. Why'd you want to kill me," he said, and died. The expression of hurt surprise and wounded reproach and sheer inability to understand stayed on his face like a forgotten suitcase left at the station, and gradually hardened there. Prew stood looking down at him, still shocked by the reproving question.”

James Jones book From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity (1951)

Understanding , Hurt

“There are moments in life where the question of knowing whether one might think otherwise than one thinks and perceive otherwise than one sees is indispensable if one is to continue to observe or reflect… What is philosophy today… if it does not consist in, instead of legitimizing what we already know, undertaking to know how and how far it might be possible to think otherwise?… The ‘essay’ —which must be understood as a transforming test of oneself in the play of truth and not as a simplifying appropriation of someone else for the purpose of communication—is the living body of philosophy, if, at least, philosophy is today still what it was once, that is to say, an askesis, an exercise of the self, in thought.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Il y a des moments dans la vie où la question de savoir si on peut penser autrement qu’on ne pense et percevoir autrement qu’on ne voit est indispensable pour continuer à regarder ou à réfléchir… Qu’est-ce donc que la philosophie aujourd’hui… si elle ne consiste pas, au lieu de légitimer ce qu’on sait déjà, à entreprendre de savoir comment et jusqu’où il serait possible de penser autrement ?… L’ « essai »—qu’il faut entendre comme épreuve modificatrice de soi-même dans le jeu de la vérité et non comme appropriation simplificatrice d’autrui à des fins de communication—est le corps vivant de la philosophie, si du moins celle-ci est encore maintenant ce qu’elle était autrefois, c’est-à-dire une « ascèse », un exercice de soi, dans la pensée.
Vol. II : L’usage des plaisirs p. 15-16.
History of Sexuality (1976–1984)

Life , Truth , Exercises , Communication

“Confession,” he said, “must be sincere. It must come from the heart. False confession, made to avoid the pain of Questioning, is useless to Church and God alike. Our aim is salvation; the salvation of the souls of these poor wretches in our charge, if necessary by the breaking of their bodies. Set against this, all else is straw in the wind.”

Keith Roberts book Pavane

Third measure “Brother John” (pp. 108-109)
Pavane (1968)

God , Pain , Soul , Heart

“It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

"Democracy" (1861)

Thinking

“[There still remains the question whether] he who discovers a new world in the depths of the invisible would not do wisely to plant on it a flag known to himself alone, and, like Achilles, "devour his heart in secret;" whether the greatest problems which have ever been guessed on earth had not better have remained buried in the brain which had found the key to them, and whether the deepest thinkers — those whose hand has been boldest in drawing aside the veil, and their eye keenest in fathoming the mysteries beyond it — had not better, like the prophetess of Ilion, have kept for heaven, and heaven only, secrets and mysteries which human tongue cannot truly express, nor human intelligence conceive.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

Review of L'Art Chrétien by Alexis-François Rio in the Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève. (1842)
Journal Intime (1882), Quotes used in the Introduction by Ward

Secret , World , Intelligence , Problem

“The question… is whether Upper Paleolithic art bears the telltale signs of Lewis-Williams' three stage neuropsychological model, and could thus be shamanistic art.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

Art

“The purpose of art is expression. Of course this short sentence raises many questions. By itself it is uninformative. One should specify what art can and cannot express. One should specify what art should and should not express. These questions cannot be answered without having some notion of the nature of man. Here it is presupposed that God created man as essentially a rational being. This implies that man’s most valuable expressions are rational and intellectual. Therefore, although man can express emotion, by screaming “Ouch,” art becomes more human and valuable in proportion to its intellectual content. This does not deny that excellent technique may express triviality, evil, and insanity. It asserts, however, that what should be expressed is rational and intelligent.”

Gordon H. Clark (1902–1985) American philosopher and Calvinist theologian

“Christian Aesthetics,” The Trinity Review, May 1989.

God , Art , Intelligence , Nature

“Question Period is not part of the legislative process, and has nothing to do with it. It is a means of monitoring the Executive that the Government cannot evade.”

John Allen Fraser (1931) Canadian politician

Source: The House Of Commons At Work (1993), Chapter 9, The House of Commons Functions, p. 122

Parting

“For Witold Doroszewski, at the root of semantic analysis lies the philosophical issue of the relationship between the general and the particular, the starting point being the analysis of the function of the copula "is". Doroszewski analyses the problem of meaning as closely linked with denotation. It is in that question that he sees the focal point of semantics.
According to Doroszewski, the history of meaning consists in the growth of a "gap" between the sign and its designatum. and the cause of changes in meanings lies in the conflict between the general character of the sign and the need for its being made to rise to the occasion whenever it is concretely embodied.
The attitude of Doroszewski, a representative of linguistic semantics, is of interest not only because he draws concrete conclusions from the general definition of semantics, but also because of his reflections on the relationship between semantics as pursued by linguists, and semantics as pursued by logicians. By touching here upon that issue, I anticipate further analysis. This does not advance the clarity of exposition, but is, unfortunately, often inevitable. In this case, it is justified in so far as it helps us to realize better the specific traits of linguistic semantics and its research objectives.”

Adam Schaff (1913–2006) Polish Marxist philosopher and theorist

Source: Introduction to semantics, 1962, p. 6

History , Problem , Change , Help

“In every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it; nor could it ever have been called in question had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of mankind. Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of the people.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter III, Part II, p. 531.

Pain , People , Sense , Country

“Is this sort of thing which has been thought about beneficial? So that if you're asking the question, for example, "Is it appropriate to think of making a copy of a person?" You have to ask not only, "What is the benefit to the people who are asking for this to be done?" But also, "What's the impact on the child that's going to be produced?"”

Ian Wilmut (1944) embryologist

And that last bit I think often gets missed out.
Interview at the Academy of Achievement (23 May 1998).

People , Thinking , Personality

“Economic theory, in every branch, deals with practical affairs. Its subject is human welfare, and it is never entirely dissociated from the practical question of how human welfare is to be promoted. But it is a special characteristic of the art of central banking that it deals specifically with the task of an authority directly entrusted with the promotion of human welfare. Human welfare, human motives, human behaviour supply material so baffling and elusive that many people are sceptical of the possibility of building a scientific edifice on so shifting a foundation. But however complex the material, and however imperfect the data, there is always an advantage to be gained from systematic thought.”

Ralph George Hawtrey (1879–1975) British economist

Preface
The Art of Central Banking (1932)

People , Art , Motivation

“There is no other language which provides answers to complex philosophical questions like epics written in Sanskrit. Be it art, literature, science or technology, people are admitting Sanskrit is most useful.”

Rajnath Singh (1951) Indian politician

On Sanskrit, as quoted in " Sanskrit Most Useful for Science, Technology, Says Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/3i2qoh/sanskrit_most_useful_for_science_technology_says/?ref=search_posts", NDTV (23 August 2015)

People , Art , Literature , Science

“Fundamentally, a society that asks questions and has the power to answer them is a healthier society than one that simply accepts what it’s told from a narrow range of experts and institutions.”

Chris Anderson book The Long Tail

Source: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (2006), Ch. 11, p. 191

“Endless brooding over a question undermines you as much as a dull pain.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The New Gods (1969)

Pain

“Hayek may still have lessons to teach us. The policies he recommended during the Great Depression may have been badly flawed but his insight that prosperity cannot be restored by unending expansion of debt may have some value at a time when the limits of “Keynesian” quantitative easing are becoming clear. It is in any case far from obvious that Keynes would have supported a continuation of QE once a disastrous collapse had been averted. “Keynesianism” is a confection of Keynes’s more mechanical disciples, not an indication of how this mercurially brilliant mind would have responded to our present dilemmas. Again, Hayek’s claim that nothing can be done to mitigate the impact of free markets on social cohesion was dangerously misguided. But he was right to point out that capitalism cannot be remodelled to fit some conception of an ideally fair distribution of resources. Whether any kind of social democracy can be reconciled with the anarchic energies of global markets is an open question.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Friedrich Hayek I knew, and what he got right - and wrong (2015)

Democracy , Support , Time

“Some scoffers have asked, “Where are the pre-Flood civilizations? If there was an entire civilization that was destroyed in the Flood of Noah, why don’t we find their cities, highways or machines as we dig in the earth?” That’s a fair question, but it is based on a false premise. What type of stuff would they need in a perfect world? If the weather was perfect and the animals were friendly and food was abundant and free and everyone was vegetarian, what would they need? They wouldn’t need houses to be protected from weather, climate, or animals. I don't see why they would need buildings of any kind! If the earth was producing enormous quantities of food from pole to pole, they wouldn’t need tractors, plows nor a highway system, nor vehicles to move food and goods from one region to another. They wouldn’t need lots of things we need for survival and protection today.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 56

World , Food , Animals , Housing

“No vision issue today is bigger than the question of efficiency versus some combination of innovation and customer service.”

John P. Kotter (1947) author of The heart of Change

Step 3, p. 69
The Heart of Change, (2002)

“I can’t quite define my aversion to asking questions of strangers. From snatches of family battles which I have heard drifting up from railway stations and street corners, I gather that there are a great many men who share my dislike for it, as well as an equal number of women who … believe it to be the solution to most of this world’s problems.”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

"Ask That Man" in Pluck and Luck (1925)

Women , Men , World , Family

“He fell behind his brothers two or three inches in height, and proportionally in bone and weight. His character and processes of mind seemed to share in this fining-down process of scale. He was not good in a fight, and his nerves were more delicate than boys' nerves ought to be. He exaggerated these weaknesses as he grew older. The habit of doubt; of distrusting his own judgment and of totally rejecting the judgment of the world; the tendency to regard every question as open; the hesitation to act except as a choice of evils; the shirking of responsibility; the love of line, form, quality; the horror of ennui; the passion for companionship and the antipathy to society — all these are well-known qualities of New England character in no way peculiar to individuals but in this instance they seemed to be stimulated by the fever, and Henry Adams could never make up his mind whether, on the whole, the change of character was morbid or healthy, good or bad for his purpose. His brothers were the type; he was the variation.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Love , World , Way , Boy

“We know that most people's intentions are good. We don't question their motives; we've never said they're unpatriotic, although they say some pretty ugly things about us. And we believe very strongly on preserving the right to differ in this country, and the right to dissent; and if I have done a good job of anything since I've been president, it's to ensure that there are plenty of dissenters.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

Statement (17 November 1967), as quoted in Vietnam: A Television History (1983) "Homefront USA" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/series/pt_10.html
1960s

People , Motivation , Country

“It is possible that the major collaboration between economists and engineers is still to come, in the greater use of physical analogues and computers of the analogue type to avoid the difficulties of calculation. Apart from their major use as possible tools for economic regulation, physical analogues have a subsidiary use, for there are students of economics, as there are many students of engineering, who can better understand the significance of the somewhat formidable mathematics that tends to be used in this field, if they can first acquaint themselves with the types of behaviour in question as exhibited by physical objects that can be seen, felt, handled and experimented with. It may also be suggested that economists may find that what they have to say about economic policy will be very readily assimilated by one group of attentive pupils, namely the scientists, engineers and technicians of industry, if explanatory notions can be drawn from the theory of automatic control, which is now part of a normal engineering education. The aim of this essay has been to give explanations of system behaviour, and some approaches to its analysis, using geometrical construction and physical analogy where possible to clarify the implications of the more usual formal algebraic approach.”

Arnold Tustin (1899–1994) British engineer

Source: The Mechanism of Economic Systems (1953), p. 2

Education , Mathematics , Understanding , Parting

“Give us another 3 or 4 months of production, not more hampered than it is at present, and we shall have something over, with which we can make ourselves disagreeable in many ways, and many places. We could perhaps take a stronger line with Japan then, even though we still got no help from the U. S. A. …People ask me how we are going to win this war. I suppose it is a very natural question, but I don't think the time has come to answer it. We must just go on fighting as hard as we can, in the belief that some time—perhaps sooner than we think—the other side will crack.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to his sister (14 July 1940), quoted in Keith Feiling, Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), p. 449.
Post-Prime Ministerial

War , People , Way , Nature

“It took one tweet on Monday evening as I left the office to light the virtual touchpaper. At five past nine I tapped: "Now Guardian prevented from reporting parliament for unreportable reasons. Did John Wilkes live in vain?"… By the time I got home, after stopping off for a meal with friends, the Twittersphere had gone into meltdown. Twitterers had sleuthed down Farrelly's question, published the relevant links and were now seriously on the case. By midday on Tuesday "Trafigura" was one of the most searched terms in Europe, helped along by re-tweets by Stephen Fry and his 830,000-odd followers.
… One or two legal experts uncovered the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840, wondering if that would help? Common #hashtags were quickly developed, making the material easily discoverable. By lunchtime – an hour before we were due in court – Trafigura threw in the towel. The textbook stuff – elaborate carrot, expensive stick – had been blown away by a newspaper together with the mass collaboration of total strangers on the web. Trafigura thought it was buying silence. A combination of old media – the Guardian – and new – Twitter – turned attempted obscurity into mass notoriety.”

Alan Rusbridger (1953) British newspaper editor

Alan Rusbridger " The Trafigura fiasco tears up the textbook http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/oct/14/trafigura-fiasco-tears-up-textbook" The Guardian, Wednesday 14 October 2009; As cited in Paul Bradshaw, ‎Liisa Rohumaa (2013) The Online Journalism Handbook: Skills to survive and thrive in the Digital Age. p. 176.
2000s

Home , Search , Light , Silence

“God doesn't make mistakes. So if I'm supposed to die, there's a very good reason for it. I'm not going to question him. I'm just going to enjoy all these beautiful things that God created.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 168

God , Beauty

“I was... questioning the students when something else caught my attention. First, dimly, then more vividly, I began to sense the presence of an invisible personality beside me. That is, I didn't see him, but felt his emotional reality quite as strongly as physical vision could ever show it. I'd "met" this same person in several previous classes when he told me mentally that he represented a past life of mine. Then, supposedly, I'd been some kind of jealous leader, demanding utmost loyalty. My friend Sue had been one of my followers. Now he wanted to confront her, feeling that she was going her own way this time and not following in her footsteps, as he thought she should have.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Adventures In Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology (1975), p. 8

Life , Way , Feeling , Reality

“Some love is just a lie of the heart
The cold remains of what began with a passionate start.
And they may not want it to end
But it will, it's just a question of when.
I've lived long enough to have learned
The closer you get to the fire the more you get burned.
But that won't happen to us
Because it's always been a matter of trust.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

A Matter of Trust.
Song lyrics, The Bridge (1986)

Love , Lie , Learning , Passion

“But there are still many unanswered questions. The halo that surrounds our Galaxy is one mystery region… The centre of the Galaxy hides even more secrets.”

Heather Couper (1949) astronomer

in "Who Discovered the Galaxy - Presidential Address – 1985" http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1986JBAA...96..284C, Heather Couper, British Astron. Assoc. Journal V. 96, No. 5 (1986), p. 293, Bibliographic Code: 1986JBAA...96..284C

Secret

“Here’s the thing about constant surveillance—the question you must ask yourself is not “Am I being overheard?” but “Is anybody paying attention to me?””

Sarah Zettel (1966) American writer

Source: Bitter Angels (2009), Chapter 2 (p. 18)

“Don’t children have the same rights to life and equal concern as adults? Don’t we have moral reasons to concern ourselves with the welfare of nonrational beings, such as animals? Mustn’t that status rest on some value independent of the rational nature in persons?
Kantian ethics must answer the last question in the negative, but it answers the other two in the affirmative. I think the right account of the moral status of nonrational living things and of human beings who lack personality in the strict sense can best be derived from Kantian principles, even though Kant himself did not worry about these questions as much as he should have, and some of the things he said about them do not seem to me entirely cogent, or to be the best account available to him.”

Allen W. Wood (1942) academic

Kantian Ethics (2008)

Life , Children , Nature , Thinking

“You will probably have noticed that three of the defendants have very wisely chosen to exercise their inalienable right not to go into the witness box to answer a lot of impertinent questions. I will merely say that you are not to infer from this anything other than that they consider the evidence against them so flimsy that it was scarcely worth their while to rise from their seats and waste their breath denying these ludicrous charges…”

Peter Cook (1937–1995) British architect

The Secret Policeman's Ball (1979)

Exercises , Box

“During another examination the question paper read, ‘do any six questions, all questions carry equal marks’. But I attempted more than six questions and wrote for the examiner, “examine any six questions, all questions carry equal marks.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

An Exclusive Interview with Prof. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar

Reading

“As I see it, all questions regarding the factual accuracy of Biblical statements—notably such ‘miraculous’ events as Virgin Birth, Resurrection, etc.—are wholly irrelevant to the true issues. Indeed, I should go so far as to say myself that the whole value of the Gospel story to mankind—and it is very great—lies not in its historical but in its legendary, mythical, or ‘typical’ character. It is not, I think, the Sermon on the Mount—or at least not this alone—that constitutes the peculiar contribution of Christianity to human thought, for very similar maxims are to be found elsewhere, and in any event could be deduced from first principles. It is to be found, rather, in the affirmation that all that is best and highest in man, as typified in the person of Jesus, is bound to arouse opposition, is often persecuted and apparently destroyed—yet is in fact indestructible and does perennially ‘rise again’, triumphant over seeming disaster.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Preface, p. 20, sentence 3. Quoted from Whately Carington,Telepathy, pp. 145-46 (Methuen 1945).
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

Birth , Thinking , Personality

“"If you go all the way back to the days just following creation, men lived nine hundred years or more." — Answers to 200 of Life's most Probing Questions”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

Life , Men , Way

“On questions of taste there is notoriously the widest divergence of opinion./…/ if, from a survival point of view, one taste be as good as another, it is not the varieties in taste which should cause surprise so much as the uniformities. To be sure, the uniformities have often no deep aesthetic roots. They represent /…/ tendencies to agreement, which govern our social ritual, and thereby make social life possible.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Theism and humanism

Life

“What is the "cost of capital" to a, firm in a world in which funds are used to acquire assets whose yields are uncertain; and in which capital can be obtained by many different media, ranging from pure debt instruments, representing money-fixed claims, to pure equity issues, giving holders only the right to a pro-rata share in the uncertain venture? This question has vexed at least three classes of economists: (1) the corporation finance specialist concerned with the techniques of financing firms so as to ensure their survival and growth; (2) the managerial economist concerned with capital budgeting; and (3) the economic theorist concerned with explaining investment behavior at both the micro and macro levels.”

Franco Modigliani (1918–2003) Italian-American economist

Franco Modigliani and Merton H. Miller. "The cost of capital, corporation finance and the theory of investment." The American economic review (1958): 261-297.

Money , World , Behavior

“I tell people that I’ve never been hurt by an honest question, and that’s true: it’s a cruel opinion that hurts, not a question.”

Kate Bornstein (1948) American author, playwright, performance artist, and gender theorist

Source: Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us (1995), p. 9

People , Hurt

“There are answers that science isn’t able to provide about the natural world—the questions about why instead of the questions about how. I’m interested in the whys. I find many of those answers in the spiritual realm. That in no way compromises my ability to think rigorously as a scientist.”

Francis S. Collins (1950) Geneticist; Director of the National Institutes of Health

Time magazine http://www.numenware.com/article/547

World , Way , Nature , Thinking

“The Question of sovereignty is often raised. I am one of those who believe that in a modern world one has to give up a great deal of sovereignty. I am prepared to give up sovereignty to the world, but not to a selected number of European countries. That is not giving up something for world security; it is giving something up to sectional interests.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1962/nov/08/britain-and-the-common-market in the House of Lords on the British application to join the Common Market (8 November 1962).
1960s

World , Country

“In the Platonic dialectic, … the terms “Being” “Non-being” “Movement,” “the One and the Many” “Identity” and “Contradiction” are methodically kept open, ambiguous, not fully defined. They have an open horizon, an entire universe of meaning which is gradually structured in the process of communication itself, but which is never closed. The propositions are submitted, developed, and tested in a dialogue, in which the partner is led to question the normally unquestioned universe of experience and speech, and to enter a new dimension of discourse — otherwise he is free and the discourse is addressed to his freedom. He is supposed to go beyond that which is given to him — as the speaker, in his proposition, goes beyond the initial setting of the terms. These terms have many meanings because the conditions to which they refer have many sides, implications, and effects which cannot be insulated and stabilized.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 131

Communication , Freedom , Universe

“Why is it fair game to question conservatives' love or loyalty to children or to their fellow man, but beyond the pale to question liberals' love of country?”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2000s, 2004, Patriot Games (2004)

Love , Children , Game , Loyalty

“They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets. The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of candy man the Jews, even more significant than God, religion, and the prophets, (it) deals very severely with those who deny this myth but does not do anything to those who deny God, religion, and the prophet. If you have burned the Jews, why don't you give a piece of Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to Israel? Our question is, if you have committed this huge crime, why should the innocent nation of Palestine pay for this crime?”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Translation by CNN, Dec 2005
2005, The World without Zionism, 2005

God , Religion

“Jurisprudence addresses the questions about law that an intelligent layperson of speculative bent — not a lawyer — might think particularly interesting.”

Richard A. Posner (1939) United States federal judge

The Problems of Jurisprudence (1990). Introduction.

Law , Intelligence , Thinking

“Knowledge brings more questions than answers”

Carlos Gershenson (1978) Mexican researcher

Quote in: Carlos Gershenson (2007) Design and Control of Self-organizing Systems. p. 144
However Eduardo Gianetti (2001) Lies We Live By: The Art of Self Deception p. 136 stated:
Laplace's omniscient intelligence transcends the human condition and, what's more serious, seems to get ever more and more out of reach, as the advance of scientific knowledge brings more questions than answers.
Misattributed
Variant: Knowledge brings more questions than answers

Knowledge

“Must an artist live in the world or out of it? I believe this to be an unanswerable question. Total retirement, natural to the Saint, is injurious to most artists. They work marvelously so long as there are materials at hand. Goethe has further advice: "Solitude is a wonderful thing when one is at peace with oneself and when there is a definite task to be accomplished."”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

World , Peace , Nature , Solitude

“Great problems are now being handled, keeping every thinking man in suspense; the unity or multiplicity of human races; the creation of man 1,000 years or 1,000 centuries ago; the fixity of species, or the slow and progressive transformation of one species into another; the eternity of matter; the idea of a God unnecessary: such are some of the questions that humanity discusses nowadays.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

Translation from The Life of Pasteur, p. 140 https://archive.org/stream/cu31924012227595#page/n153/mode/2up
Soirées scientifiques de la Sorbonne (1864)

God , Idea , Problem , Thinking

“However dark our lot may be, there is light enough on the other side of the cloud, in that pure empyrean where God dwells, to irradiate every darkness of this world; light enough to clear every difficult question, remove every ground of obscurity, conquer every atheistic suspicion, silence every hard judgment, light enough to satisfy, nay, to ravish the mind forever.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 275.

God , World , Light , Silence

“I like to think of it like buying a car. Admit it. Your left brain looks at a vehicle in terms of the numbers. What's the horsepower? The towing capacity? The 0-60? That's our competitor's approach. But your right brain is different. There's only one question out there: sitting behind the wheel, where will this baby take me? In other words, do you want to go just a little bit faster, down the same streets you've always driven, or down a new road, to places you've never seen before? That's the difference with Nintendo DS.”

Reggie Fils-Aimé (1961) American businessman

On Nintendo DS
Source: E3 2004

Cars , Thinking , Baby

“There are moments or periods when it would be wonderful to plan something and do it and have the thing only do what you planned to do, and then, there are other times when the destruction of those planned things becomes interesting to you. So then, it becomes a question of destroying – of destroying the planned forms; it's like an escape, it's something to do, something to begin the situation. You yourself, you don't decide, but if you want to paint, you have to find out some way to start this thing off, whether it is painting it out or putting it in..”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

n.p.
1960's, Living Art, 1963

Way , Time , Painting

“We live in a system described in obsolete terms. We have come to believe our own repeated declarations that our society is based on individual initiative – whereas, in fact, most of it is no more individual than an infantry division. We assume that our economic system is based on “private property.” Yet most industrial property is is no more private than a seat in a subway train, and indeed it is questionable whether much of it can be called “property” at all. We indignantly deny that we are collectivist, yet it is demonstrable that more than two-thirds of our enterprise is possible only because it is collectivist: what is really meant is that the State did not do the collectivizing.”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

Source: Power Without Property, 1959, p. 27; Cited in asociologist.com http://asociologist.com/2009/12/07/retrosociology-quotes-of-the-day-berle-power-without-property/, 2009/12/07.

Training

“The question, then, for Western companies, as much as for Western governments, is to decide whose side they are on: the Chinese officials who like to define their culture in a paternalistic, authoritarian way, or the large number of Chinese who have their own ideas about freedom.”

Ian Buruma (1951) Dutch writer and academic

Battling the Information Barbarians China often views the ideas of foreigners, from missionaries in the 17th century to 21st-century Internet entrepreneurs, as subversive imports. The tumultuous history behind the clash with Google. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704878904575031263063242900.html#video%3DA8F64C9A-F513-4C06-8E68-CCB96C2ED70D%26articleTabs%3Darticle

Way , Idea , Freedom

“I read Hemingway's posthumous Paris memoirs, rumoured to have been written by his wife (`Out of the question,' Toni assured me, `they're so badly written they must be authentic').”

Julian Barnes book Metroland

Page 85.
Metroland (1981)

Reading

“The question is asked in ignorance, by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Preface
1840s, Philosophical Fragments (1844)

“The problem was the Voxish prophecies. Our founders had written them into the Coryphaeus as unalterable axioms—embedded truths, permanently exempt from debate or revision. That hadn’t mattered when the rapture of the Hypotheticals was a distant goal toward which we moved in gradual increments. But now we had come to the blunt end of the question. Prophecy had collided with reality, and the obvious inference—that the prophecies might have been mistaken—was a possibility the Coryphaeus was forbidden to consider.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Vortex

Source: Vortex (2011), Chapter 22 (pp. 227-228)

Truth , Problem , Reality , Distant

“I learn by doing, but each time I don’t understand, I will ask… If I don’t understand, I don’t feel ashamed to ask questions.”

Sukanto Tanoto (1949) Indonesian businessman

Keynote speech, Wharton Global Modular Course, May 25, 2015. http://www.inside-rge.com/Sukanto-Tanoto-Entrepreneur-Journey-1
2015

Feeling , Understanding , Learning , Time

“Plowboy: You truly feel that all the major changes in history have been caused by science and technology?
Asimov: Those that have proved permanent—the ones that affected every facet of life and made certain that mankind could never go back again—were always brought about by science and technology. In fact, the same twin "movers" were even behind the other "solely" historical changes. Why, for instance, did Martin Luther succeed, whereas other important rebels against the medieval church—like John Huss—fail? Well, Luther was successful because printing had been developed by the time he advanced his cause. So his good earthy writings were put into pamphlets and spread so far and wide that the church officials couldn't have stopped the Protestant Reformation even if they had burned Luther at the stake.
Plowboy: Today the world is changing faster than it has at any other time in history. Do you then feel that science—and scientists—are especially important now?
Asimov: I do think so, and as a result it's my opinion that anyone who can possibly introduce science to the nonscientist should do so. After all, we don't want scientists to become a priesthood. We don't want society's technological thinkers to know something that nobody else knows—to "bring down the law from Mt. Sinai"—because such a situation would lead to public fear of science and scientists. And fear, as you know, can be dangerous.
Plowboy: But scientific knowledge is becoming so incredibly vast and specialized these days that it's difficult for any individual to keep up with it all.
Asimov: Well, I don't expect everybody to be a scientist or to understand every new development. After all, there are very few Americans who know enough about football to be a referee or to call the plays … but many, many people understand the sport well enough to follow the game. It's not important that the average citizen understand science so completely that he or she could actually become involved in research, but it is very important that people be able to "follow the game" well enough to have some intelligent opinions on policy.
Every subject of worldwide importance—each question upon which the life and death of humanity depends—involves science, and people are not going to be able to exercise their democratic right to direct government policy in such areas if they don't understand what the decisions are all about.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Mother Earth News interview (1980)

Life , Death , People , World

“Today we decide about metaphysics and about even more elevated things at philosophy conferences. For everything that is to be done these days we must first have a meeting, and here is how it works: people come together, constantly come together, and they all wait for one another to turn up so that the others will tell them how it is, and if it doesn’t get said, never mind, everyone has had their say. It may very well be that all the talkers who are having their say have understood little of the matter in question, but still we believe that if we accumulate all that misunderstanding something like understanding will leap forth at the end of the day. Thus there are people today who travel from one meeting to the next and who are sustained by the confidence that something is really happening, that they’ve actually done something; whereas, at bottom, they’ve merely ducked out of work, seeking in chatter a place to build a nest for their helplessness—a helplessness, it is true, that they will never understand.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Gesamtausgabe, 20:376, as translated by David Farrell Krell in Portraits of American Continental Philosophers (1999), p. 101

People , Travel , Confidence , Understanding

“In this chapter I want to raise the question partly in jest but partly also in seriousness whether the concept of the image cannot become the abstract foundation of a new science, or at least a cross-disciplinary specialization. As I am indulging in the symbolic communication of an image of images I will even venture to give the science a name — Eiconics — hoping thereby to endow it in the minds of my readers with some of the prestige of classical antiquity. I run some risk perhaps of having my new science confused with the study of icons. A little confusion, however, and the subtle overtones of half-remembered associations are all part of the magic of the name.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Robert A. Solo (1994) commented: "Curiously, and quite independently of the publication of the The Image, there did occur in the 1950s and in the decades that followed a revolutionary transformation of the social and behavioral sciences associated with the term structuralism, which hinged on the concept and study of the image (call it cognitive structure, or paradigm, or episteme, or ideology). This was the case in the work of Jean Piaget in psychology, of Thomas Kuhn and Michael Foucault in the history and philosophy of science, of Noam Chomsky in linguistics, of Claude Levi Strauss in anthropology, and others. Though The Image was the first and in my view by far the finest American structuralist essay, it had no visible impact on economics... The economist's image of his world is alas very difficult to penetrate and even more difficult to change."
Source: 1950s, The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society, 1956, p. 128

Hope , Communication , Study , Science

“What will we do when they start capturing our people?" Klein asked. "They will, you know, if they haven't by now. Things go wrong." Heydrich's fingers drummed some more. He didn't worry about the laborers who'd expanded this redoubt- they'd all gone straight to the camps after they did their work. But captured fighters were indeed another story. He sighed. "Things go wrong. Ja. If they didn't, Stalin would be lurking somewhere in the Pripet Marshes, trying to keep his partisans fighting against us. We would've worked Churchill to death in a coal mine." He barked laughter. "The British did some of that for us, when they threw the bastard out of office last month. And we'd be getting ready to fight the Amis on their side of the Atlantic. But… things went wrong." "Yes, sir." After a moment, Klein ventured, "Uh, sir- you didn't answer my question." "Oh. Prisoners." Heydrich had to remind himself what his aide was talking about. "I don't know what to do, Klein, except make sure our people all have cyanide pills." "Some won't have the chance to use them. Some won't have the nerve," Klein said. Not many men had the nerve to tell Reinhard Heydrich the unvarnished truth. Heydrich kept Klein around not least because Klein was one of those men. They were useful to have. Hitler would have done better had he seen that. Heydrich recognized the truth when he heard it now; one more thing Hitler'd had trouble with.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Source: The Man With the Iron Heart (2008), p. 56-57

Death , Men , People , Truth

“I had hoped that out of so many stories you would at least have produced one or two, which could hardly be questioned, and which would clearly show that ghosts or spectres exist. The case you relate… seems to me laughable. In like manner it would be tedious here to examine all the stories of people, who have written on these trifles. To be brief, I cite the instance of Julius Caesar, who, as Suetonius testifies, laughed at such things and yet was happy. …And so should all who reflect on the human imagination, and the effects of the emotions, laugh at such notions; whatever Lavater and others, who have gone dreaming with him in the matter, may produce to the contrary.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza https://books.google.com/books?id=Nz1kRKDMbUMC (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54).

People , Dreams , Hope , Imagination

“When questions of “class” interests are eliminated from public controversy a victory is thereby gained for the possessing, conservative class, whose only hope of security lies in such elimination.”

James Connolly (1868–1916) Irish republican and socialist leader

Labour in Irish History (1919), p. 15

Hope , Victory

“All of these politicians that I’m running against now, they’re trying to disassociate. I mean, you looked at Bush, it took him five days to answer the question on Iraq. He couldn’t answer the question. He didn’t know. I said, “Is he intelligent?” Then I looked at Rubio. He was unable to answer the question, is Iraq a good thing or bad thing? He didn’t know. He couldn’t answer the question. How are these people gonna lead us? How are we gonna — how are we gonna go back and make it great again? We can’t. They don’t have a clue. They can’t lead us. They can’t. They can’t even answer simple questions. It was terrible.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

People , Intelligence

“[On the question: 'What was your main stylistic influence up to this time']: The Renaissance chiefly - Piero, Mantegna, Uccello - but I was attracted also by the modern idioms - Léger, Picasso - and was close to the abstract painters on the project such as Stuart Davis, Burgoyne Diller, Arshile Gorky, Balcomb Greene, etc. At the time I did the Queens project, there was already a marked change in my work - it was becoming more concerned with cubist concepts of treating space.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

n.p.
1961 - 1980, Oral history interview with Philip Guston, 1965 January 29

Change , Time

“The very wise and wealthy financiers of the world--going way back, even before Rothschild's time--have observed that the world was a pretty rocky place to live in, and that nations were always fighting over something or other, there was always somebody who was trying to conquer somebody else, and wars were universal. Too bad about that, but that's the way it is. So we--the bankers--found out that if we loan money to them that we'll get paid back - they don't question what the interest rate is because they're fighting a war! And if they can win the war they can just plunder the victim and pay us whatever we want out of the plunder - it doesn't cost them anything really. Then the issue comes up of what happens if one of these nations decides not to pay us? Ah! The answer is very simple: if they refuse to pay us back we'll finance an opposing nation, a revolutionary group somewhere else to become an enemy of that nation and attack it, and destroy it, invade it. We'll create another war, in other words, in order to get our money back, we'll finance this side to attack that side. And so, by financing all sides in a war, and keeping the world divided up into warring fractions so that no one unit is particularly stronger than the other, the banks can continue to finance all sides of wars forever, and always collect their interest, because they have the ability of putting one nation against another nation against another nation to collect their debts.”

G. Edward Griffin (1931) American conspiracy theorist, film producer, author, and political lecturer

From the documentary Corporate Fascism: The Destruction of America's Middle Class (2011) http://www.youtube.com/embed/hTbvoiTJKIs?autoplay=1&start=2094&end=2183

Money , War , World , Way

“Carlyle! Carlyle only raises questions he cannot answer, and seems best contented if he can make the rest of us as discontented as himself; and all the others, all, that is, who have any power at all, fight beside religion, either as if it were not worth saving, or as if it had nothing to do with them.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Letter V
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Religion , Fight

“What should our policy be towards non-Marxist ideas? As far as unmistakable counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs of the socialist cause are concerned, the matter is easy, we simply deprive them of their freedom of speech. But incorrect ideas among the people are quite a different matter. Will it do to ban such ideas and deny them any opportunity for expression? Certainly not. It is not only futile but very harmful to use crude methods in dealing with ideological questions among the people, with questions about man's mental world. You may ban the expression of wrong ideas, but the ideas will still be there. On the other hand, if correct ideas are pampered in hothouses and never exposed to the elements and immunized against disease, they will not win out against erroneous ones. Therefore, it is only by employing the method of discussion, criticism and reasoning that we can really foster correct ideas and overcome wrong ones, and that we can really settle issues.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

" VIII. ON "LET A HUNDRED FLOWERS BLOSSOM LET A HUNDRED SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT CONTEND" AND "LONG-TERM COEXISTENCE AND MUTUAL SUPERVISION" "
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 对于非马克思主义的思想，应该采取什么方针呢？对于明显的反革命分子，破坏社会主义事业的分子，事情好办，剥夺他们的言论自由就行了。对于人民内部的错误思想，情形就不相同。禁止这些思想，不允许这些思想有任何发表的机会，行不行呢？当然不行。对待人民内部的思想问题，对待精神世界的问题，用简单的方法去处理，不但不会收效，而且非常有害。不让发表错误意见，结果错误意见还是存在着。而正确的意见如果是在温室里培养出来的，如果没有见过风雨，没有取得免疫力，遇到错误意见就不能打胜仗。因此，只有采取讨论的方法，批评的方法，说理的方法，才能真正发展正确的意见，克服错误的意见，才能真正解决问题。

People , World , Disease , Idea

Quotes about doubt page 24

Quotes about doubt
page 24