“The name philosopher, which meant originally 'lover of wisdom,' has come in some strange way to mean a man who thinks it is his business to explain everything in a certain number of large books. It will be found, I think, that in proportion to his colossal ignorance is the perfection and symmetry of the system which he sets up; because it is so much easier to put an empty room tidy than a full one.”

— William Kingdon Clifford

As quoted by A. D'Abro, The Evolution of Scientific Thought from Newton to Einstein https://archive.org/details/TheEvolutionOfScientificThought (1927)

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

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William Kingdon Clifford48

English mathematician and philosopher 1845–1879

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“Rousseau has said in his Emile (book iv.): "Even though philosophers should be in a position to discover the truth, which of them would take any interest in it? Each one knows well that his system is not better founded than the others, but he supports it because it is his. …The essential thing is to think differently from others. With believers he is an atheist; with atheists he is a believer."”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

How much substantial truth there is in these gloomy confessions of this man of painful sincerity.
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), III : The Hunger of Immortality

“Does man think because he has found that thinking pays?
Does he bring his children up because he has found it pays?”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 467
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

“There is true religion in that man who, instead of endeavoring to perfect but one department of his nature, makes his physical, mental, social, and moral life, equal. Cultivate your physical nature, perfect your life, and in that proportion your soul will be perfect. Cultivate strength, vigor, power, manliness, and symmetry, and in that proportion the soul can think greater thoughts.”

Cora L. V. Scott (1840–1923) American spiritualist, writer

“The Religion of Life” (1858)

“I know from experience that to one who thinks much and feels deeply, it often seems that he has only to put down his thoughts and feelings in order to produce something altogether out of the common; yet as soon as he sets to work he falls into a certain mannerism of style and common phraseology; his thoughts do not come spontaneously, and one might almost say that it is not the mind that directs the pen, but the pen leads the mind into common, empty artificiality.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Without Dogma

"Rome, 9 January"
Without Dogma (1891)

“One who knows little may explain that little with more ease and efficacy than one who has his head stuffed full of the prescribed bunch of official wisdom.”

Joseph Dietzgen (1828–1888) german philosopher

Letter 1
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“No one has more than a given number of minutes... in which he can work, and no matter how great his ability he will soon find his limitations. If, however, he uses that ability in finding and teaching others as capable as himself, or in certain details even more so, the limits to his sphere of operations are hard to set.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), A Representative Business of the Twentieth Century

“In some ways. I do want to do something very different with each book…I think this book is linked to the first but approaches it in a completely different way. The first book was much chillier, more remote. And intentionally so. I don’t think it was a book that anyone loved and I didn’t love it either. It was not a book that was meant to inspire love in the way that I think this one is.”

Hanya Yanagihara (1974) American novelist and travel writer

On how she compares her works The People in the Trees and A Little Life in “Hanya Yanagihara: ‘I wanted everything turned up a little too high’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/26/hanya-yanagihara-i-wanted-everything-turned-up-a-little-too-high-interview-a-little-life in The Guardian (2015 Jul 26)

“He picked up from me a certain way of thinking, certain logic, certain cut of mind. He has got from his mother a facility with words, and a certain intuition. So please do give him some slack, if you find that he thinks slowly, and speaks even more slowly.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Lee Kuan Yew on Lee Hsien Loong, Straits Times, Jun 22, 2004
2000s

“Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Source: "Can Socialists Be Happy?" https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/can-socialists-be-happy/, Tribune (20 December 1943). Published under the name ‘John Freeman’.

“Fortunate indeed is the man who has found wisdom and who is full of that discretion which is better than all the acquiring, trafficking, and possession of gold and silver. … I dwell (so says Wisdom) in good and salutary counsel, and am present at learned and wise cogitations. Therefore must a man seek this Wisdom and, having found it, take care to hold it well, that in its time and place it may be of help to him. The ensuing representation will set before your eyes the treatise which I have propounded.”

Philibert de l'Orme (1514–1570) French architect of the Renaissance.

Livre d'architecture as quoted by Edward Fenton, "Messer Philibert Delorme" The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin Vol. 13, No. 4, Dec., 1954

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William Kingdon Clifford48

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