Quotes about doubt
page 42

“The danger of disturbing the public tranquillity by interesting too strongly the public passions, is a still more serious objection against a frequent reference of constitutional questions to the decision of the whole society.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Federalist No. 49 (2 February 1788)
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Decision, Passion

“History teaches us that everything is in flux. Our fight to redress the material crimes of 1948 is scarcely begun, and adversity has taught us patience. As for the Israeli state and its Spartan culture of permanent war, it is all too vulnerable to time, fatigue and demographics: In the end, it is always a question of our children and those who come after us.”

Mahmoud al-Zahar (1945) Co-founder of Hamas

[Mahmoud al-Zahar, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/16/AR2008041602899.html, No Peace Without Hamas, Washington Post, April 17, 2008, February 25, 2014]

War, Children, History, Time

“Today I'm very proud of myself, because I've accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish. I was just informed, while on the helicopter, that our president has finally released a birth certificate. I want to look at it, but I hope it's true, so that we can get on to much more important matters, so the press can stop asking me questions. He should have done it a long time ago. Why he didn't do it when the Clintons asked for it, why he didn't do it when everyone else was asking for it, I don't know. But I am really honored, frankly, to have played such a big role in hopefully, hopefully getting rid of this issue. Now, we have to look at it, we have to see, is it real? Is it proper? What's on it? But I hope it checks out beautifully. I am really proud, I am really honored.”

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

press conference, 2011-04-27
Trump Questions Obama Birth Certificate
2011-04-27
TMZ
http://www.tmz.com/2011/04/27/donald-trump-barack-obama-birth-certificate-comment-quote/
2011-05-01
Regarding the release of Barack Obama's full birth record from Hawaii that morning
2010s, 2011

Hope, Birth, Time

“There is a paradigm shift towards a distributed and integrated enterprise. Currently, computer systems that support enterprise functions were created independently. This hampers enterprise integration Therefore, there is a need for a computer based data model which provides a shared and well deﬁned terminology of an enterprise, and has the capability to deductively answer common sense questions.
This paper discusses how TOVE tackles these needs by deﬁning a framework for modeling generic level representations such as activities, time, and resources. Since there has never been a well-deﬁned set of criteria to evaluate such models, this paper also introduces a set of evaluation criteria which may be used to evaluate modelling efforts.”

Mark S. Fox (1952) Canadian computer scientist and Professor of Industrial Engineering

Mark S. Fox, John F. Chionglo, and Fadi G. Fadel (1993) " A common-sense model of the enterprise http://windsor.mie.utoronto.ca/enterprise-modelling/papers/fox-ierc93.pdf." Proceedings of the 2nd Industrial Engineering Research Conference. Vol. 1. 1993.

Support, Sense, Effort, Time

“Semantics (semasiology) is a branch of linguistics. The questions which are of particular interest in this connection are — with what is that branch of linguistics concerned, and in what does it see the distinction between itself and the semantic problems found in contemporary logic.
To begin with the term itself: it comes from the eminent French linguist Bréal and is genetically connected with linguistics. In the late 19th century Michel Bréal published his Essai de semantique. Science des significations.”

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

Introduction to semantics, 1962

Problem, Science

“The opinion which you give us the contribution which can be derived from women is sensible and judicious. We will benefit. We all know the influence which this interesting sex can possess, which cannot bear more indifferently than we the yoke of tyranny. And which is endowed with less courage, when it is a question of contriving to break it.”

François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period

L'avis que tu nous donnes sur la partie qu'on peut en tirer des femmes est sensé et judicieux; nous en profiterons. Nous connaissons toutes l'influences que peut avoir ce sexe intéressant qui ne supporte pas plus indifféremment que nous le joug de la tyrannie; et qui n'est doué d'un moindre courage, lorsqu'il s'agit de concourir à le briser.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 44, 27082 2892-7]
On women

Women, Sex, Courage, Indifference

“Suppose no one asked a question, what would be the answer.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

"Near East or Chicago A Description"
Useful Knowledge (1928)

“Oh yeah, there was a point where they said they thought the threat had probably or had possibly been overstated, and then they started to question their sources, and blah, blah, blah. But I don't know how it was resolved, you know? But they were serious about it. And what can you say? I mean, gee, there were a lot of man-hours spent doing that gig, so the least I can say is, "Thank you very much."”

Russell Crowe (1964) New Zealand-born Australian actor, film producer and musician

GQ Interview (2005)

“Technique shapes an aristocratic society, which in turn implies aristocratic government. Democracy in such a society can only be a mere appearance. Even now, we see in propaganda the premises of such a state of affairs. When it comes to state propaganda, there is no longer any question of democracy.”

Jacques Ellul book The Technological Society

Source: The Technological Society (1954), p. 275

Democracy, Appearance

“I think, to many conservatives, many Republicans, it was reassuring, in the sense that this was the first time we have seen a president, a conservative president, really express vocally at a press conference the bias he feels and many of us feel has been given in the coverage toward the Trump administration. And so he’s sort of holding the press’ feet to the fire while he’s taking their questions. And it’s combative. It’s interesting. I think you are going to see a lot more people tuning in to these press conferences. It used to be that conservatives who were in government, like myself, we would get what we felt was unfair coverage, we’d go home, we would grumble, we would complain about it, but we actually wouldn’t say anything to the reporter or to the reporters while they’re asking us additional questions. He’s very confrontational. And I think that’s refreshing. So I think it actually is going to be good. And I think the public is going to take an interest in these press conferences much more so than in past presidencies.”

Kris Kobach (1966) American politician

Does Trump’s confrontational style help him as president? https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trumps-confrontational-style-help-president (February 16, 2017)

People, Feeling, Home, Thinking

“From an evolutionary perspective, the human races are all very similar variations of the same gene pool. The question that looms over all the social sciences, unanswered and largely unaddressed, is how to explain the paradox that people as individuals are so similar yet human societies differ so conspicuously in their cultural and economic attainments.”

Nicholas Wade (1942) British writer

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History (2014)

People, Science

“Who knows what I want to do? Who knows what anyone wants to do? How can you be sure about something like that? Isn't it all a question of brain chemistry, signals going back and forth, electrical energy in the cortex? How do you know whether something is really what you want to do or just some kind of nerve impulse in the brain? Some minor little activity takes place somewhere in this unimportant place in one of the brain hemispheres and suddenly I want to go to Montana or I don't want to go to Montana. How do I know I really want to go and it isn't just some neurons firing or something? Maybe it's just an accidental flash in the medulla and suddenly there I am in Montana and I find out I really didn't want to go there in the first place. I can't control what happens in my brain, so how can I be sure what I want to do ten seconds from now, much less Montana next summer? It's all this activity in the brain and you don't know what's you as a person and what's some neuron that just happens to fire or just happens to misfire.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

White Noise (1984)

Summer, Personality

“To gain knowledge, we must learn to ask the right questions; and to get answers, we must act, not wait for answers to occur to us.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Anatol Rapoport, "Modern Systems Theory – An Outlook for Coping with Change", paper given in the 1970 John Umstead Distinguished Lectures at North Carolina Department of Mental Health, Research Division, on 5 February 1970, and appeared in Revue Francaise de Sociologie, October 1969, p. 16
1970s and later

Knowledge, Learning, Waiting

“A century ago it was perfectly well known that whoever had one audience of a Master in Chancery was made to pay for three, but no man heeded the enormity until it suggested to a young lawyer that it might be well to question and examine with rigorous suspicion every part of a system in which such things were done. The day on which that gleam lighted up the clear hard mind of Jeremy Bentham is memorable in the political calendar beyond the entire administration of many statesmen.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

p, 125
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Light, Parting

“If you know these things, the question has enormous importance: who will be the judge in the future? It is not trivial, who is the judge. It's not sufficient to dress somebody in a robe, put a beret on his head and open the lawbook! It's a big difference whether a German or a negro takes place on the judgement seat. Sure, you can teach a negro the German language, the schematic application of laws and paragraphs -- and yet the negro will always judge like his blood commands!”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Wenn man diese Dinge weiß, dann ist die Frage von ungeheurer Bedeutung: Wer soll künftig Richter sein? Es ist nicht gleichgültig, wer Richter ist. Damit, dass einer die schwarze Robe anlegt, das Barett aufsetzt und das Gesetzbuch aufschlägt, ist es nicht getan! Es ist ein großer Unterschied, ob ein Deutscher oder ein Neger auf dem Richterstuhl sitzt. Gewiß, Sie können einen Neger die deutsche Sprache, die schematische Anwendung der Gesetze und Paragraphen lehren -- trotzdem wird der Neger immer so richten, wie es ihm sein Blut gebietet!
04/20/1926, speech in the Bavarian regional parliament ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

Law, Future

“Enthusiasm for the universe, in knowing as well as in creating, also answers the question of doubt and meaninglessness. Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge. And meaninglessness is no threat so long as enthusiasm for the universe and for man as its center is alive.”

Paul Tillich book The Courage to Be

Source: The Courage to Be (1952), p. 121

Knowledge, Universe

“Can they solve the problem of the nagging unanswerable question of justification and vocation? Their principle is the traditional one of classical mysticism: by “experiences” (“kicks”) to transcend the nagged and nagging self altogether and get out of one’s skin, to where no questions are asked—nor is there any articulate speech to ask them in.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 156.

Problem

“While the war was still in progress, I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one which might easily have been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, "Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?" I had never thought of this before. The august dignity of motherhood and its terrible responsibilities now appeared to me in a new aspect, and I could think of no better way of expressing my sense of these than that of sending forth an appeal to womanhood throughout the world, which I then and there composed.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

On the Franco-Prussian War as the inspiration for her "Mother's Day Proclamation" of 1870 calling for mothers to arise as a social force against war in general.
Reminiscences (1899)

Life, War, World, Way

“If we say that no one's out there
And we say we're goin' nowhere
And we avoid the question
Is this all that it means?”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

I Wonder What Would Happen to this World
Song lyrics, Living Room Suite (1978)

“I've spent most of the last few days looking at information to help me reimagine… a history… that digs into the stratum below the ones that carry wars or political affairs… many of the questions are new. …they have to do with our interaction with our ecological landscape, with what we might call the "natural West," as both idea in the mind and as tangible rock, grass, and flesh…”

Dan Flores (1948) American historian

The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains (2003)

War, History, Idea, Nature

“Shakespeare gets to the root of the alcohol question in his well-known statement—'Good wine is a good, familiar creature if it be well used.”

William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…

Alcohol in St. Elizabeth Parish Magazine (1905). As quoted in Counsels and ideals from the writings of William Osler (1921, 2nd edition) http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hc1qm3;view=1up;seq=295

Alcohol, Wine

“I have resolved the question of the Sahara which poisoned us for twenty-five years”

Mohammed VI of Morocco (1963) King of Morocco

Original French: J’ai réglé la question du Sahara qui nous empoisonnait depuis vingt-cinq ans. About the Western Sahara conflict in an Interview with Le Figaro–September 2001 http://www.maroc.ma/fr/discours-royaux/interview-accord%C3%A9e-par-sa-majest%C3%A9-le-roi-mohammed-vi-au-quotidien-fran%C3%A7ais-%C2%AB-le

“I don’t let go of concepts—I question them. Then they let go of me.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

“The Dutch example shows that when people overcome their fear, David can defeat Goliath. For decades, the multicultural elite suppressed dissent by denouncing as racists anyone who questioned their pro-Islam, pro-mass immigration dogma. But ﬁnally, after silently watching for years the immense damage done to our nation by the elite's policies, the Dutch people had enough. In the face of all the threats and intimidation levelled against my supporters, enough people had the courage to vote for the PW that we fundamentally altered our country's politics. All it takes is courage.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Source: 2010s, Marked for Death (2012), Ch. 13: "How to Turn the Tide", p. 208

People, Fear, Courage, Support

“An audience member: Question is for GG. Sir, if a woman is at your concert and chooses to leave through an exit door because she didn't realize she may be getting raped are you gonna let her leave or are you gonna rape her?”

GG Allin (1956–1993) American singer-songwriter

On The Jerry Springer Show

“[Overall level questions involved an] understanding of the deep structure of the data being presented in their totality, usually comparing trends and seeing groupings.”

Jacques Bertin (1918–2010) French geographer and cartographer

Source: Semiology of graphics (1967/83), p. 16; as cited in: Stacy Kathryn Keller (2008) Levels of Line Graph Question Interpretation.... p. 6

Understanding

“If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Common Form
Epitaphs of the War (1914-1918) (1918)

“The realist, then, would seek in behalf of philosophy the same renunciation the same rigour of procedure, that has been achieved in science. This does not mean that he would reduce philosophy to natural or physical science. He recognizes that the philosopher has undertaken certain peculiar problems, and that he must apply himself to these, with whatever method he may find it necessary to employ. It remains the business of the philosopher to attempt a wide synoptic survey of the world, to raise underlying and ulterior questions, and in particular to examine the cognitive and moral processes. And it is quite true that for the present no technique at all comparable with that of the exact sciences is to be expected. But where such technique is attainable, as for example in symbolic logic, the realist welcomes it. And for the rest he limits himself to a more modest aspiration. He hopes that philosophers may come like scientists to speak a common language, to formulate common problems and to appeal to a common realm of fact for their resolution. Above all he desires to get rid of the philosophical monologue, and of the lyric and impressionistic mode of philosophizing. And in all this he is prompted not by the will to destroy but by the hope that philosophy is a kind of knowledge, and neither a song nor a prayer nor a dream. He proposes, therefore, to rely less on inspiration and more on observation and analysis. He conceives his function to be in the last analysis the same as that of the scientist. There is a world out yonder more or less shrouded in darkness, and it is important, if possible, to light it up. But instead of, like the scientist, focussing the mind's rays and throwing this or that portion of the world into brilliant relief, he attempts to bring to light the outlines and contour of the whole, realizing too well that in diffusing so widely what little light he has, he will provide only a very dim illumination.”

Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) American philosopher

Chap XXV.
The Present Conflict of Ideals: A Study of the Philosophical Background of the World War (1918)

World, Dreams, Hope, Business

“There,' I said to a friend, 'lies the best man I ever knew or ever expect to know; he was just to all men, and his heart was full to overflowing with kindness toward those who accomplished his death.' I have been satisfied that the persons who called at the Malvern were some of the assassins who would have killed him there if they could have got on board, and they could easily have escaped in the confusion by jumping overboard and swimming to the shore, which was not more than twenty yards distant. More-over, I do not think that the prime instigator of the deed was ever suspected, though I have my own opinion on the subject, as also had Senator Nye, that stanch old patriot who held, in the latter part of the war, a position somewhat analogous to that of a minister of police, or was in consultation, by the wish of President Lincoln, with the police authorities of our great cities. He picked up many interesting incidents in relation to the President's assassination which he talked about freely to me; but he was a prudent man, and a politician, and did not desire to raise questions which might affect his personal interests in the future.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), pp. 319–320

Death, Men, War, Thinking

“Like I say, the way I write songs is, you know, inspirational. I have to wait for it to happen. And when it happens I get lines, and I just write them down, you know. I'm not sort of a Tin Pan Alley sort of songwriter. I just sort of write down what I get - without censoring or questioning what it is and what it means, you know. Like later on I look at what it means, but not at the time.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

"Nights in Copenhagen with Van Morrison" (1985) interview by Al Jones

Way, Time, Waiting

“There are two subcategories of holist called irredundant holists and redundant holists. Students of both types image an entire system of facts or principles. Though an irredundant holist’s image is rightly interconnected, it contains only relevant and essential constitents. In contrast, redundant holists entertain images that contain logically irrelevant or overspecific material, commonly derived from data used to "enrich" the curriculum, and these students embed the salient facts and principles in a network of redundant items. Though logically irrelevant, the items in question are of great psychological importance to a "redundant holist", since he uses them to access, retain and manipulate whatever he was originally required to learn.”

Gordon Pask (1928–1996) British psychologist

Source: Learning Strategies and Individual Competence (1972), p. 258.

Learning

“Women in general are not interested in questions of principle as such, but at most only in so far as they affect particular personalities. They require the dramatic element to evoke their interest. With many men, on the contrary, though this element of course enhances interest, it is not the indispensable condition of interest.”

Ernest Belfort Bax (1854–1926) British barrister and journalist

To-Day magazine, October issue ‘No Misogyny But True Equality’ http://historyoffeminism.com/ernest-belfort-bax-no-misogyny-but-true-equality-1887-complete/ ‘No Misogyny But True Equality’ (1887)

Women, Men, Personality

“I think the roots of this antagonism to science run very deep. They're ancient. We see them in Genesis, this first story, this founding myth of ours, in which the first humans are doomed and cursed eternally for asking a question, for partaking of the fruit of the "Tree of Knowledge". It's puzzling that Eden is synonymous with paradise when, if you think about it at all, it's more like a maximum-security prison with twenty-four hour surveillance. It's a horrible place. Adam and Eve have no childhood. They awaken full-grown. What is a human being without a childhood? Our long childhood is a critical feature of our species. It differentiates us, to a degree, from most other species. We take a longer time to mature. We depend upon these formative years and the social fabric to learn many of the things we need to know.”

Ann Druyan (1949) American author and producer

Ann Druyan interviewed by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. — "Ann Druyan Talks About Science, Religion, Wonder, Awe … and Carl Sagan" http://www.csicop.org/si/show/ann_druyan_talks_about_science_religion/. Skeptical Inquirer 27 (6). November–December 2003.

Knowledge, Thinking, Tree, Learning

“I say that things are useful whenever they can be put to any use at all; whenever they are seen to be capable of satisfying a want. In this connection, there is no need to consider the subtle shades of meaning classified in ordinary language under terms ranging from the necessary to the useful, from the useful to the agreeable, from the agreeable to the superfluous. For present purposes, necessary, useful, agreeable and superfluous simply mean more or less useful. Furthermore, we need not concern ourselves with the morality or immorality of any desire which a useful thing answers or serves to satisfy. From other points of view the question of whether a drug is wanted by a doctor to cure a patient, or by a murderer to kill his family is a very serious matter, but from our point of view, it is totally irrelevant. So far as we are concerned, the drug is useful in both cases, and may even be more so in the latter case than in the former.”

Léon Walras (1834–1910) French mathematical economist

Léon Walras, Elements d'économie pure, ou théorie de la richesse sociale, 1874, Translation, Routledge, 1954/2013, p. 65.

Family

“The socialist revolution was a pure and simple question of ‘force.’… Between the [bourgeoisie and the proletariat] no accord is possible. One must disappear. The weaker will be ‘eliminated.’ The class struggle is therefore a question of ‘force.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

As quoted in The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism, A. James Gregor, New York and London, The Free Press (1969) p. 106
Undated

“God's Agape is a love that makes a mockery of all attempts at rational motivation. But if the rationalising tendency will not allow even God's love to retain spontaneity, but insists on finding a motive for it in the value of its object, then it is only to be expected that it should insist even more strongly on treating the Christian's love for his neighbour in a similar way. For Jesus, on the other hand, it is beyond question that God's love is unmotivated and spontaneous; and therefore it also also beyond question for Him that a man's love for his neighbour should be spontaneous and unmotivated. There is no occasion to look behind our neighbor's actual condition for any hidden valuable quality that will explain and justify our love for him. God's love is explanation and sanction enough.”

Anders Nygren (1890–1978) Swedish bishop

Source: Agape and Eros (1930), p. 99

Love, God, Way, Motivation

“… I can't work well under the conditions at Bell Labs. Walter and I are looking at a few questions relating to point-contact transistors, but Shockley keeps all the interesting problems for himself.”

John Bardeen (1908–1991) American physicist and engineer

told to Frederick Seitz as quoted by Lillian Hoddeson in No boundaries: University of Illinois vignettes https://books.google.com/books?id=02eFrTPIo4gC, University of Illinois Press 2004 (quote page 242)

Problem

“Scientists work by a combination of intuition and insight in trying to understand a question.”

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (1952) Nobel prize winning American and British structural biologist

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan interview: 'It takes courage to tackle very hard problems in science

Understanding

“The clerk of Al-Mughira bin Shu'ba narrated, "Muawiya wrote to Al-Mughira bin Shu'ba: Write to me something which you have heard from the Prophet (p. b. u. h)." So Al-Mughira wrote: I heard the Prophet saying, "Allah has hated for you three things: 1. Vain talks, (useless talk) that you talk too much or about others. 2. Wasting of wealth (by extravagance) 3. And asking too many questions (in disputed religious matters) or asking others for something (except in great need). (See Hadith No. 591, Vol. Ill)”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Sunni Hadith

Hate, Wealth

“I am myself convinced that the existing law on abortion is uncertain and is also, and perhaps more importantly, harsh and archaic and that it is in urgent need of reform. I certainly shall have no hesitation in voting for the Second Reading of the Bill. I take this view because I believe that we have here a major social problem. How can anyone believe otherwise when perhaps as many as 100,000 illegal operations a year take place, that the present law has shown itself quite unable to deal with the problem? I believe this, too, because of the danger which exists at present to those who are forced to resort to back-street abortionists and to the misery which is caused to some of those who fail to get an abortion. I believe it also because we all know…that the law is consistently flouted by those who have the means to do so. It is, therefore, very much a question of one law for the rich and one law for the poor.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1966/jul/22/medical-termination-of-pregnancy-bill in the House of Commons in favour of the Bill legalising abortion (22 July 1966) 1960s

Law, Problem, Reading

“Nearby, where the main road forked, stood an iron cross on a stone base. As the English couple watched, a mason was cutting in half a dozen fresh names. On the far side of the street, in the deep shadow of a doorway, a youngish woman in black was also watching. She was so pale they assumed at first she had some sort of wasting disease. She remained perfectly still, with one hand holding an edge of her headscarf so that it obscured her mouth. The mason seemed embarrassed and kept his back to her while he worked. After a quarter of an hour an old man in blue workman's clothes came shuffling along in carpet slippers and took her hand without a word and led her away. When the propriétaire came out he nodded at the other side of the street, at the empty space and murmured, 'Trois. Mari et deux frères,' as he set down their salads.This sombre incident remained with them as they struggled up the hill in the heat, heavy with lunch, towards the Bergerie de Tédenat. They stopped half way up in the shade of a stand of pines before a long stretch of open ground. Bernard was to remember this moment for the rest of his life. As they drank from their water bottles he was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust, like spores whose separate identities would remain unknown, and whose totality showed more sadness than anyone could ever begin to comprehend; a weight borne in silence by hundreds of thousands, millions, like the woman in black for a husband and two brothers, each grief a particular, intricate, keening love story that might have been otherwise. It seemed as though he had never thought about the war before, not about its cost. He had been so busy with the details of his work, of doing it well, and his widest view had been of war aims, of winning, of statistical deaths, statistical destruction, and of post-war reconstruction. For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories. This came upon Bernard by a pine tree in the Languedoc in 1946 not as an observation he could share with June but as a deep apprehension, a recognition of a truth that dismayed him into silence and, later, a question: what possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?”

Ian McEwan book Black Dogs

Page 164-165.
Black Dogs (1992)

Love, Life, Death, War

“Inextricably intertwined in the question was slavery, and it only became the more so in the years that followed. Socially and culturally the North and South were not much different. They prayed to the same deity, spoke the same language, shared the same ancestry, sang the same songs. National triumphs and catastrophes were shared by both. For all the myths they would create to the contrary, the only significant and defining difference between them was slavery, where it existed and where it did not, for by 1804 it had virtually ceased to exist north of Maryland. Slavery demarked not just their labor and economic situations, but power itself in the new republic.”

William C. Davis (1946) American historian

Source: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), p. 9

“If we recognize, following the materialist theories, that only the physical nature exist, and that man contain ("renferme", Fr.) no higher essence, divine, which, by one side of his being, raise (promote or improve…) him above his animal nature, it would be a question ("il ne saurait être question", Fr.) neither of obligation, nor of moral responsability; then the supreme good would consist for him, indeed, to satisfy his appetites and his natural inclinations (fondness or partiality, -"penchant", Fr.), to look for the pleasure and flee from (scud, shun, avoid, -"fuir", Fr.) pain. In this case, there could be neither religion nor moral, since religion is precisely what raise man above vulgar (or common, - "vulgaire", Fr.) reality, and that moral is the very negation of selfishness.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 41.

Pain, Pleasure, Religion, Nature

“A guy gave me a job at an information booth, no questions asked.”

Jay London (1966) American comedian

One-liners

Guy

“The huge human brain, approximately 1,350 cubic centimeters, is the most complex organic structure in the known world. Understanding the human mind/brain mechanisms in evolutionary perspective is the goal of the new scientific discipline called evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology focuses on four key questions: (1) Why is the mind designed the way it is—that is, what causal processes created, fashioned, or shaped the human mind into its current form? (2) How is the human mind designed—what are its mechanisms or component parts, and how are they organized? (3) What are the functions of the component parts and their organized structure—that is, what is the mind designed to do? (4) How does input from the current environment interact with the design of the human mind to produce observable behavior?”

David M. Buss (1953) American psychologist

Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind (6th ed., 2019), Chap. 1: The Scientific Movements Leading to Evolutionary Psychology
Evolutionary Psychology, 2005

World, Way, Behavior, Fashion

“Sophie's hard first question to the cards had not, precisely, gone without an answer, it had been transmuted into questions about the question. It had branched and rooted like a tree, growing questions like buds, and then at some moment all the questions had become one question: what tree is this?”

John Crowley (1942) American writer

Bk. 3, Ch. 4
Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament (1981)

Tree

“It is a very tough agreement, with many thorns, and as for the question of who will implement it, that depends on who the Greek people trust to negotiate debt restructuring.”

Euclid Tsakalotos (1960) Greek economist and politician

" Fiery all-night debate in Greek parliament before bailout vote http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/aug/14/greek-parliament-finance-minister-debate-bailout-vote-video" (14 August 2015)

People, Dependency

“The practical reformer has continually to demand that changes be made in things which are supported by powerful and widely-spread feelings, or to question the apparent necessity and indefeasibleness of established facts; and it is often an indispensable part of his argument to show, how these powerful feelings had their origin, and how those facts came to seem necessary and indefeasible. There is therefore a natural hostility between him and a philosophy which discourages the explanation of feelings and moral facts by circumstances and association, and prefers to treat them as ultimate elements of human nature; a philosophy which is addicted to holding up favorite doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the voice of Nature and of God, speaking with an authority higher than that of our reason. In particular, I have long felt that the prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873), Ch. 7: General View of the Remainder of My Life (p. 192)

God, Hostility, Truth, Sex

“Here is the question: is a legitimization of the social bond, a just society, feasible in terms of a paradox analogous to that of scientific activity? What would such a paradox be?”

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) French philosopher

Source: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1977), p.xxv

“If you made a short visit to CERN's Theory Division you might think that you are in a zoo. But that is not entirely right. True enough, you will find women and men of dozens of nationalities, cultures, languages and what not… some of them may even look like ET. But what these people are doing is what defines our species in its ensemble: asking, and sometimes answering, some of the deepest questions. Thus the zoo is more like a circus of magicians, in which the performers — uncharacteristically — would insist in showing you their cards… and the entrance is free!”

Alvaro De Rujula (1944)

"What is a "theoretical physicist"?" at CERN Public Web.

Women, Men, People, Thinking

“You have the charisma of a damp rag, and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk. And the question that I want to ask, […] that we're all going to ask, is "Who are you?" I'd never heard of you. Nobody in Europe had ever heard of you. I would like to ask you, President, who voted for you, and what mechanism … oh, I know democracy's not popular with you lot, and what mechanism do the people of Europe have to remove you? Is this European democracy? Well, I sense, I sense though that you are competent and capable and dangerous, and I have no doubt in your intention, to be the quiet assassin of European democracy, and of the European nation states. You appear to have a loathing for the very concept of the existence of nation states - perhaps that's because you come from Belgium, which of course is pretty much a non-country. But since you took over, we've seen Greece reduced to nothing more than a protectorate. Sir, you have no legitimacy in this job at all, and I can say with confidence that I speak on behalf of the majority of British people in saying: We don't know you, we don't want you, and the sooner you're put out to grass, the better.”

Nigel Farage (1964) British politician and former commodity broker

Speech in the European Parliament, 24 February 2010 - Ukip's Nigel Farage tells Van Rompuy: You have the charisma of a damp rag http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/25/nigel-farage-herman-van-rompuy-damp-rag, The Guardian, 24 February 2010. 2010

People, Democracy, Confidence, Sense

“As a general rule, I beg that it may be understood, that a case is not to be cut into parts, but that when it is known what the question in issue is, it must be met at once.”

Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough (1750–1818) Lord Chief Justice of England

Rees v. Smith and others (1816), 2 Starkie, 32.

Parting

“A theory of knowledge is an answer to the question "What is knowledge?" This question, like many which are asked by philosophers, sounds very simple. We all know, at least roughly, what knowledge is. But difficulties appear the moment that we begin to fill in the details.”

David Pears

What is Knowledge? (1971)

Knowledge, Appearance

“The problem was, I enjoyed Question Period too much and loved the challenge it provided. Far from being a dreaded burden, it had become an exciting part of my life; opposition members attacked me, I fought back, I won or lost or held them to draw, and the next day we did it all over again.”

Jean Chrétien (1934) 20th Prime Minister of Canada

Source: My Years As Prime Minister (2007), Chapter Four, One Day at a Time, p. 106-107

Love, Life, Problem, Parting

“By far the most valuable things, which we know or can imagine, are certain states of consciousness, which may roughly be described as the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects. No one, probably, who has asked himself the question, has ever doubted that personal affection and the appreciation of what is beautiful in Art or Nature, are good in themselves; nor, if we consider strictly what things are worth having purely for their own sakes, does it appear probable that any one will think that anything else has nearly so much value as the things which are included under these two heads.”

G. E. Moore book Principia Ethica

Principia Ethica (1903; revised edition, Cambridge University Press, 1993).

Pleasure, Beauty, Art, Imagination

“It was with deep emotion that we read the announcement issued by the Council of Flanders at its plenary meeting of June 20, 1918, because it give expression to the fact that considerable and important sections of the Belgian people are advocating Germany's right to figure in the Belgian question, and that the voice of agitation over that which they have suffered is overtopped by the voice of consanguinity with the Teutonic race.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Source: 1910s, Speech in the Reichstag, 21 June 1918, p. 179.

People, Suffering, Reading

“Without presuming to decide the purely legal question, on which it seems evident to me from Madison's and Hamilton's papers that the Fathers of the Constitution were not agreed, I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Letter (4 November 1866) http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/acton-lee.html to Robert E. Lee

World, Hope, Exercises, Democracy

“Keynes didn’t make an all-out assault on Economic Man, but he often resorted to plausible psychological theorizing rather than careful analysis of what a rational decision-maker would do. Business decisions were driven by “animal spirits,” consumer decisions by a psychological tendency to spend some but not all of any increase in income, wage settlements by a sense of fairness, and so on.
But was it really a good idea to diminish the role of Economic Man that much? No, said Friedman, who argued in his 1953 essay “The Methodology of Positive Economics” that economic theories should be judged not by their psychological realism but by their ability to predict behavior. And Friedman’s two greatest triumphs as an economic theorist came from applying the hypothesis of rational behavior to questions other economists had thought beyond its reach.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"Who Was Milton Friedman?", The New York Review of Books (February 15, 2007)
The New York Review of Books articles

Behavior, Idea, Business, Decision

“I don't know Who — or what — put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone — or Something — and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.”

Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961) Swedish diplomat, economist, and author

Markings (1964)

Life

“Why does love, even such love as he claims to practise, need the spectacle of beauty to bring it to life? What, in the abstract, do shapely legs have to do with love, or for that matter with desire? Or is that just the nature of nature, about which one does not ask questions?”

J.M. Coetzee book Slow Man

Slow Man (2004)

Love, Life, Beauty, Nature

“This divergence and perversion of the essential question is most striking in what goes today by the name of philosophy. There would seem to be only one question for philosophy to resolve: What must I do? Despite being combined with an enormous amount of unnecessary confusion, answers to the question have at any rate been given within the philosophical tradition on the Christian nations. For example, in Kant´s Critique of Practical Reason, or in Spinoza, Schopenhauer and specially Rousseau.

But in more recent times, since Hegel´s assertion that all that exists is reasonable, the question of what one must do has been pushed to the background and philosophy has directed its whole attention to the investigation of things as they are, and to fitting them into a prearranged theory. This was the first step backwards.

The second step, degrading human thought yet further, was the acceptance of the struggle for existence as a basic law, simply because that struggle can be observed among animals and plants. According to this theory the destruction of the weakest is a law which should not be opposed. And finally, the third step was taken when the childish originality of Nietzsche´s half-crazed thought, presenting nothing complete or coherent, but only various drafts of immoral and completely unsubstantiated ideas, was accepted by the leading figures as the final word in philosophical science. In reply to the question: what must we do? the answer is now put straightforwardly as: live as you like, without paying attention to the lives of others.

If anyone doubted that the Christian world of today has reached a frightful state of torpor and brutalization (not forgetting the recent crimes committed in the Boers and in China, which were defended by the clergy and acclaimed as heroic feats by all the world powers), the extraordinary success of Nietzsche´s works is enough to provide irrefutable proof of this.

Some disjointed writings, striving after effect in a most sordid manner, appear, written by a daring, but limited and abnormal German, suffering from power mania. Neither in talent nor in their basic argument to these writings justify public attention. In the days of Kant, Leibniz, or Hume, or even fifty years ago, such writings would not only have received no attention, but they would not even have appeared. But today all the so called educated people are praising the ravings of Mr. N, arguing about him, elucidating him, and countless copies of his works are printed in all languages.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: What is Religion, of What does its Essence Consist? (1902), Chapter 11

People, World, Education, Law

“Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask — Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge.”

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

" Shakespeare http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/marnold/bl-marn-shakes.htm" (1849, st. 1)

Art, Knowledge

“No reference is truly direct—every reference depends on some kind of coding scheme. It's just a question of how implicit it is.”

Douglas Hofstadter book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid

"Six-Part Ricercar"
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979)

Dependency

“The most interesting question of history is always, What were these people thinking?”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, (2012)

People, History, Thinking

“From the top of the campanile, or Giotto's bell tower, in Florence, one can look out over the city in all directions, past the stone banking houses where the rich Medici lived, past the art galleries they patronized, past the magnificent cathedral and churches their money helped to build, and on to the Tuscan vineyards where the contadino works the soil as hard and efficiently as he probably ever did. The city below is busy with life. The university halls, the shops, the restaurants are crowded. The sound of Vespas, the "wasps" of the machine age, fills the air, but Florence is not today what it once was, the center in the 15th century of a great civilization, one of the most extraordinary the world has ever known. Why? What produced the Renaissance in Italy, of which Florence was the center? How did it happen that such a small population base could produce, in the short span of a few generations, great historical figures first in commerce and literature, then in architecture, sculpture and painting, and finally in science and music? Why subsequently did Northern Italy decline in importance both commercially and artistically until at the present time it is not particularly distinguished as compared with many other regions of the world? Certainly the people appear to be working as hard and energetically as ever. Was it just luck or a peculiar combination of circumstances? Historians have been fascinated by such questions ever since they began writing history, because the rise and fall of Florence or the whole of Northern Italy is by no means an isolated phenomenon.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. 1; lead paragraph, about the problem

Life, Money, People, Age

“Allow me briefly to allude to some of these improvements. The question of building up class interests, or fostering one branch of industry to the prejudice of another under the exercise of the revenue power, which gave us so much trouble under the old constitution, is put at rest forever under the new. We allow the imposition of no duty with a view of giving advantage to one class of persons, in any trade or business, over those of another. All, under our system, stand upon the same broad principles of perfect equality. Honest labor and enterprise are left free and unrestricted in whatever pursuit they may be engaged. This old thorn of the tariff, which was the cause of so much irritation in the old body politic, is removed forever from the new.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Exercises, Business, Personality, Perfection

“Despite our profound differences, Americans on both or all sides of the great cultural struggles of our day must recognize their opponents (or most, or at least many, of their opponents) as reasonable people of goodwill who, doing their best, have arrived at different conclusions about fundamental moral questions — including basic questions of justice and human rights. If that is to happen, political and intellectual leaders, as well as people in the media, are going to have to model treating their adversaries with respect — and not demonizing them.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

2017, Interview with Matthew Bunson (2017)

People, Justice

“Not in Chicago, in the heat of June, but at the ballot-boxes of the Republic, in the quiet of November, after the silence of deliberate judgment, will this question be settled. And now, gentlemen of the Convention, what do we want?”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Speech Nominating John Sherman for President (1880)

Silence, Box

“You see, I went on with this research just the way it led me. That is the only way I ever heard of true research going. I asked a question, devised some method of obtaining an answer, and got — a fresh question. Was this possible or that possible? You cannot imagine what this means to an investigator, what an intellectual passion grows upon him! You cannot imagine the strange, colourless delight of these intellectual desires!”

H. G. Wells book The Island of Doctor Moreau

Source: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Ch. 14: Doctor Moreau Explains

Way, Imagination, Passion

“The point is, your request for a lawyer comes about two hundred years too late to be meaningful. The verbalisms lag behind the facts. Nevertheless, you shall have a lawyer—or a lollipop, whichever you prefer, after I am through questioning you. If I were you, I’d take the lollipop. More nourishing.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 3, “Hunted” (p. 38) - Secret Service officer to the main character during an interrogation.

“We have confirmation - and I'm not going to give the name yet because we are trying to coax this guy out of the closet - but one of the senior most people in the SETI project, which is the Carl Sagan Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Effort, has confirmed to the Disclosure Project, this is one of the senior most people, that they have received multiple extraterrestrial signals … but that now they are getting external human, probably NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) or NSA jamming of those signals and they are getting very frustrated. The question is why hasn't the SETI project, funded by Paul Allen who's the co-founder of Microsoft, come forward with this information? I'm a little uncomfortable even mentioning this, except for the fact that the public needs to know that this effort, which has received a great deal of mainstream media attention, has actually confirmed to us from two inside sources that they have received extraterrestrial signals and have confirmed them as being extraterrestrial and that they have become increasing in frequency.”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

May 9, 2006 2006 Source: [Steven M. Greer, SETI Has Made ET Contact http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5793453751420599744, Recorded Conference, Disclosure Project, Toronto, Canada, 2006-05-09]

People, Guy, Search, Intelligence

“In the West our hand of peace has reached out into empty air. The responsibility there falls on our enemies. If we have to continue the struggle, then the hearts of the people will be where the flags of the country are flying, and we hope and pray for a German victory that will bring us the peace that has been denied to us…We thank Secretary of State von Kuehlmann and his collaborators for the tenacity and diplomatic skill with which they represented our German interests at the negotiations in Brest…I now come to the question of the strategic demarcation of frontiers, the possible allocation of Polish territories to Germany and Prussia. My political friends are of the opinion that in the question of the strategic safeguarding of frontiers decisive importance should be attached to the voice of the Supreme Command. From our own national point of view we are not at all interested in having Polish territory added to Germany in any way…It will be a matter for our military leaders to examine the question to what extent strategic security of our frontiers is a vital necessity to Germany. If so, we shall accept it because there is a national need for it.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Speech in the Reichstag (19 February 1918), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), pp. 149-150.
1910s

People, Peace, Hope, Way

“I believed it, we published it. Official questions had been raised, but we stood by the story and her. Internal questions had been raised, but none about her other work. The reports were about the story not sounding right, being based on anonymous sources, and primarily about purported lies [about] her personal life -- [told by men reporters], two she had dated and one who felt in close competition with her.”

Bob Woodward (1943) American journalist

Post Reporter's Pulitzer Prize Is Withdrawn; Pulitzer Board Withdraws Post Reporter's Prize (19 April 1981)

Life, Men, Personality

“He entered; but the mask he wore
Concealed his face from me.
Still, something I had seen before
He brought to memory. "Who art thou? What thy rank, thy name?"
I questioned, with surprise;
"Thyself" the laughing answer came,
"As seen of others' eyes."”

John B. Tabb (1845–1909) American poet

"The Stranger", in Poems (1894) http://www.archive.org/details/poemsjohntabb00tabbrich

Art, Memory

“So if you happen to bump into a Democrat candidate, you might want to ask this simple question: What's your plan? If they say they want to protect the homeland, but oppose the Patriot Act, ask them this question: What's your plan? If they say they want to uncover terrorist plots, but oppose listening in on terrorist conversations, ask them this question: What's your plan? If they say they want to stop new attacks on our country, but oppose letting the CIA detain and question the terrorists who might know what those plots are, ask them this question: What's your plan? If they say they want to win the war on terror, but call for America to pull out from what al Qaeda says is the central front in this war, ask them this question: What's your plan?…The truth is, the Democrats can't answer that question. Harsh criticism is not a plan for victory. Second-guessing is not a strategy.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Remarks by the President at Missouri Victory 2006 Rally http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/11/20061103-1.html (November 3, 2006) 2000s, 2006

War, Truth, Victory, Country

“Western democracy has to be ruled out. For me that’s cut and dried: there’s no question of setting up democracy in Israel, because democracy means equal rights for all, irrespective of racial or religious origins. Therefore democracy and Zionism cannot go together. And Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed this state to be a Jewish state, is a totally schizophrenic document. You just can’t, on the one hand, want a Jewish state and at the same time give non-Jews the right to become a majority.”

Meir Kahane (1932–1990) American/Israeli political activist and rabbi

G-d's Law: an Interview with Rabbi Meir Kahane https://web.archive.org/web/20090219141224/http://kahane.org/meir/interview.htm

Democracy, Time

“The following question had been much in my mind. How is it possible for a population to remain alike in its features, as a whole, during many successive generations, if the average produce of each couple resemble their parents? Their children are not alike but vary…”

Francis Galton (1822–1911) British polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in eugenics

Source: Memories of My Life (1908), Ch. XX Heredity (1909 ed.)

Children, Parent, Success

“So, to answer the question, “What did God do before the Creation?” there was no “before the Creation.” God actually created time for us to live in. He’s not in time like we are, so the question is invalid. Think on that one for a few years (or since 1969, like I’ve been doing!). I can say it but I still can’t understand it. I’m one blind man trying to tell another blind man about colors. Once we get to Heaven, we will say, “O-o-o-o-h! So That’s how it works!” Once God gives us eyes to see and ears to hear in Heaven, I’m sure many more things will make sense! I’m ready for that day! I hope you are, too.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 29

God, Hope, Color, Understanding

“One does not need to have the authentic Hittite nose to be a Jew; the term Jew rather denotes a special way of thinking and feeling. A man can very soon become a Jew without being an Israelite; often it needs only to have frequent intercourse with Jews, to read Jewish newspapers, to accustom himself to Jewish philosophy, literature and art. On the other hand, it is senseless to call an Israelite a 'Jew', though his descent is beyond question, if he has succeeded in throwing off the fetters of Ezra and Nehemiah, and if the law of Moses has no place in his brain, and contempt of others no place in his heart.”

Houston Stewart Chamberlain book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century

The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts) (1899)

Law, Art, Way, Feeling

“I propose that it shall be no longer malum in se for a citizen to pummel, cowhide, kick, gouge, cut, wound, bruise, maim, burn, club, bastinado, flay, or even lynch a [government] jobholder, and that it shall be malum prohibitum only to the extent that the punishment exceeds the jobholder’s deserts. The amount of this excess, if any, may be determined very conveniently by a petit jury, as other questions of guilt are now determined. The flogged judge, or Congressman, or other jobholder, on being discharged from hospital — or his chief heir, in case he has perished — goes before a grand jury and makes a complaint, and, if a true bill is found, a petit jury is empaneled and all the evidence is put before it. If it decides that the jobholder deserves the punishment inflicted upon him, the citizen who inflicted it is acquitted with honor. If, on the contrary, it decides that this punishment was excessive, then the citizen is adjudged guilty of assault, mayhem, murder, or whatever it is, in a degree apportioned to the difference between what the jobholder deserved and what he got, and punishment for that excess follows in the usual course.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"The Malevolent Jobholder," The American Mercury (June 1924), p. 156
1920s

“But someone is bound to question … by what right I regard as Ideological State Apparatuses, institutions which for the most part do not possess public status, but are quite simply private institutions. As a conscious Marxist, Gramsci already forestalled this objection in one sentence. The distinction between the public and the private is a distinction internal to bourgeois law, and valid in the (subordinate) domains in which bourgeois law exercises its ‘authority’. The domain of the State escapes it because the latter is ‘above the law’: the State, which is the State of the ruling class, is neither public nor private; on the contrary, it is the precondition for any distinction between public and private. The same thing can be said from the starting-point of our State Ideological Apparatuses. It is unimportant whether the institutions in which they are realized are ‘public’ or ‘private’. What matters is how they function.”

Louis Althusser book Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

Source: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", p. 97

Law, Exercises, Parting

“Don't say yes to that question, that would be difficult.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

CNN.com http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/11/12/allies/ At a joint press conference with George W. Bush, 13 November 2004. Blair interrupted when a reporter asked Bush if he sees Blair as his poodle. 2000s

“I never questioned Barack Obama's patriotism.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

'I never called all liberals anti-American'
Politico
2008-10-20
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14777.html
2011-05-27
2000s, Hardball Appearance (October 2008)

“If you take a look at science in its everyday function, of course you find that scientists run the gamut of human emotions and personalities and character and so on. But there’s one thing that is really striking to the outsider, and that is the gauntlet of criticism that is considered acceptable or even desirable. The poor graduate student at his or her Ph. D. oral exam is subjected to a withering crossfire of questions that sometimes seem hostile or contemptuous; this from the professors who have the candidate’s future in their grasp. The students naturally are nervous; who wouldn’t be? True, they’ve prepared for it for years. But they understand that at that critical moment they really have to be able to answer questions. So in preparing to defend their theses, they must anticipate questions; they have to think, “Where in my thesis is there a weakness that someone else might find — because I sure better find it before they do, because if they find it and I'm not prepared, I'm in deep trouble."”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Wonder and Skepticism
Skeptical Inquirer
19
1
1995
January-February
0194-6730
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/wonder_and_skepticism/

Hostility, Understanding, Nature, Thinking

“Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Essays. Goethe's Helena.
1830s, Sir Walter Scott (1838)

Life

“The animals themselves are incapable of demanding their own liberation, or of protesting against their condition with votes, demonstrations, or boycotts. Human beings have the power to continue to oppress other species forever, or until we make this planet unsuitable for living beings. Will our tyranny continue, proving that morality counts for nothing when it clashes with selfinterest, as the most cynical of poets and philosophers have always said? Or will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible? The way in which we answer this question depends on the way in which each one of us, individually, answers it.”

Peter Singer book Animal Liberation

Source: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 6: Speciesism Today

Way, Animals, Dependency

“No man ever enters into the feelings of a woman, let his kindness be what it may; they are too subtle and too delicate for a hand whose grasp is on "life's rougher things." They require that sorrow should find a voice; now the most soothing sympathy is that which guesses the suffering without a question.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

No.7. Rob Roy — DIANA VERNON.
Literary Remains

Life, Feeling, Suffering

“How did particle physics get itself into its current state where some of its most prominent practioners question whether their colleagues have given up on science?”

Peter Woit (1957) American physicist

p. 4 https://books.google.com/books/about/Not_Even_Wrong.html?id=pcJA3i0xKAUC&pg=PA4 Not Even Wrong (book, 2006)

Science

“Once a person acknowledges that they possess some form of privilege, they are more likely to accept the reality that they are not in any way objective about the form of marginalization in question”

Julia Serano (1967) transsexual American writer, spoken-word performer, trans-bi activist, and biologist

Leftist Critiques of Identity Politics (2018)

Way, Reality, Personality

“Lov'est thou me? This is the one test question of our religion; for he that loveth is born of God.”

William Adams (1706–1789) Fellow and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 398.

God, Religion

“We have, indeed, in the part taken by many scientific men in this controversy of "Law versus Miracle," a good illustration of the tenacious vitality of superstitions. Ask one of our leading geologists or physiologists whether he believes in the Mosaic account of the creation, and he will take the question as next to an insult. Either he rejects the narrative entirely, or understands it in some vague non-natural sense. …Whence …this notion of "special creations"…Why, after rejecting all the rest of the story, he should strenuously defend this last remnant of it, as though he had received it on valid authority, he would be puzzled to say.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

The Development Hypothesis (1852)

Men, Law, Understanding, Nature

“But would she do it differently if she could? She doubted it. Her experiences growing up ad formed her into the woman that she'd become, just as his experiences had formed him, and she didn't regret them. And yet…she knew that wasn't the question that mattered. …she realized the choice before her was this: Where do I go from here?
It is never too late to change things.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Gabby Holland, Chapter 13, p. 168
2000s, The Choice (2007)

Change

“What has been shown by Machiavelli, who is often (like Nietzsche) congratulated for tearing off hypocritical masks, brutally revealing the truth, and so on, is not that men profess one thing and do another (although no doubt he shows this too) but that when they assume that the two ideals are compatible, or perhaps are even one and the same ideal, and do not allow this assumption to be questioned, they are guilty of bad faith (as the existentialists call it, or of “false consciousness,” to use a Marxist formula) which their actual behavior exhibits. Machiavelli calls the bluff not just of official morality—the hypocrisies of ordinary life—but of one of the foundations of the central Western philosophical tradition, the belief in the ultimate compatibility of all genuine values. His own withers are unwrung. He has made his choice. He seems wholly unworried by, indeed scarcely aware of, parting company with traditional Western morality.”

Isaiah Berlin book Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas

Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas (1980), The Originality of Machiavelli (1971)

Life, Men, Truth, Faith

“If Korzybski cannot be said to have established an empirical science, what then has he done? He has pointed a way toward the establishment of such a science. He was a precursor of an intellectual revolution which is just now beginning and which promises to match that of the Renaissance. If Korzybski is seen in this role, then the question of his originality or erudition is not important. He might have something of a dilettante in him. He might have pretended to have more specialized knowledge than he actually had. Great portions of his outlook might be found in the works of more modest and more meticulous workers, That is not important. He was a man of vision and an apostle. Such men are all too rare in our age of specialization.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Source: 1950s, "What is Semantics?", 1950, p. 6 ; as cited in: Schaff (1962;95)

Men, Age, Way, Knowledge

“There is much sentimentality in the fourteen Points of Wilson's peace program. As far as we are concerned the question of Alsace-Lorraine is one that we cannot discuss and it cannot even be raised at any international conference. The territorial integrity of Turkey must be maintained. The Reich Chancellor has declared that we do not seek the annexation of Belgium. However, the Flemish movement is working for independence. The Reich Government should make it its task to support this movement. With regard to the question of self-determination…it must be remembered that there is no political education in Lithuania and that from seventy to eighty per cent. of the population there is illiterate…[Poland does] not need freedom.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Speech in the Reichstag (24 January 1918), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 138.
1910s

Education, Peace, Support, Freedom