
Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), p. 172
1940s
Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 23
Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), p. 172
1940s
“If there's one thing I believe, its that I don't know anything and anything can happen”
[Republican Presidential Debate, 2007-06-05, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0706/05/se.01.html, CNN]
asked whether he believes God created the universe in six literal days 6,000 years ago
Republican Debates
Saint's Progress (1919)
Context: "I cannot explain. There are things that I can't make clear, because you are wilfully blind to all that I believe in. For what do you imagine we are fighting this great war, if it is not to reestablish the belief in love as the guiding principle of life?"
Laird shook his head. "We are fighting to redress a balance, which was in danger of being lost."
"The balance of power?"
"Heavens! — no! The balance of philosophy."
Pierson smiled. "That sounds very clever, George; but again, I don't follow you."
"The balance between the sayings: 'Might is Right,' and 'Right is Might.' They're both half-truth, but the first was beating the other out of the field. All the rest of it is cant, you know. And by the way, sir, your Church is solid for punishment of the evildoer. Where's mercy there? Either its God is not merciful, or else it doesn't believe in its God.
“I don't think any word can explain a man's life.”
Source: Citizen Kane
Variant transcription from "Death of a Genius" in Life Magazine: "Certainly there are things worth believing. I believe in the brotherhood of man and the uniqueness of the individual. But if you ask me to prove what I believe, I can't. You know them to be true but you could spend a whole lifetime without being able to prove them. The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a leap—call it intuition or what you will—and comes out upon a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap."
Unsourced variant: "The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you do not know how or why. All great discoveries are made in this way." The earliest published version of this variant appears to be The Human Side of Scientists by Ralph Edward Oesper (1975), p. 58 http://books.google.com/books?id=-J0cAQAAIAAJ&q=%22solution+comes+to+you+and+you+do+not+know%22&dq=%22solution+comes+to+you+and+you+do+not+know%22&hl=en, but no source is provided, and the similarity to the "Life Magazine" quote above suggests it's likely a misquote.
Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 136
PBS interview with David Frost (November 1995)
1990s