“The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric,” p. 24.
The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953)
Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Design of Inquiring Systems (1971), p. 11
The Law of Mind (1892)
Context: But no mental action seems necessary or invariable in its character. In whatever manner the mind has reacted under a given sensation, in that manner it is the more likely to react again; were this, however, an absolute necessity, habits would become wooden and ineradicable, and no room being left for the formulation of new habits, intellectual life would come to a speedy close. Thus, the uncertainty of the mental law is no mere defect of it, but is on the contrary of its essence. The truth is, the mind is not subject to "law," in the same rigid sense that matter is. It only experiences gentle forces which merely render it more likely to act a given way than it otherwise would be. There always remains a certain amount of arbitrary spontaneity in its action, without which it would be dead.
The Snow-Image, and Other Tales, Preface http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/sipf.html (1852)
The Westminster Review, vol. 6 (1826), p. 13
Context: This habit of forming opinions, and acting upon them without evidence, is one of the most immoral habits of the mind.... As our opinions are the fathers of our actions, to be indifferent about the evidence of our opinions is to be indifferent about the consequences of our actions. But the consequences of our actions are the good and evil of our fellow-creatures. The habit of the neglect of evidence, therefore, is the habit of disregarding the good and evil of our fellow-creatures.
Performances http://chinaheritage.net/journal/objecting/ (《演出》), written in 1976
“It’s what a man thinks is true which controls his actions, not what is really true.”
Source: Tomorrow Knight (1976), Chapter 13 (p. 138)
At an unveiling of a memorial to T. E. Lawrence at the Oxford High School for Boys (3 October 1936); as quoted in Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography of T.E. Lawrence (1989) by Jeremy M Wilson.
The 1930s
