“If certain facts present themselves with an alarming regularity”

— Adolphe Quetelet

Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)
Context: I have always comprehended with difficulty... how persons pre-occupied doubtless by ideas, have seen any tendency to materialism in exposition of a series of facts deduced from documents. In giving to my work the title of Physics, I have had no other aim than to collect, in uniform order, the phenomena affecting man, nearly as physical science brings together the phenomena appertaining to the material world. If certain facts present themselves with an alarming regularity, to whom is blame to be ascribed? Ought charges of materialism to be brought against him who points out that regularity?

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

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If certain facts present themselves with an alarming regularity" by Adolphe Quetelet?

Adolphe Quetelet 52

Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociolo… 1796–1874

Related quotes

“In our own country, from the trivial to the truly dangerous, it is the range and regularity of the untruths we see that should be cause for profound alarm, and spur to action.”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Speech in the U.S. Senate (2018)

“The mere suggestion of fame and fortune casts a glamour all its own. It is rather alarming how quickly people will turn someone else's fiction into fact in order to support their own fictions of themselves.”

Libba Bray book Rebel Angels

Source: Rebel Angels

“Well, there are certain stock words that I have found myself using a great deal. When I become aware of them, it is an alarm signal meaning I am falling back on something that has served in the past—it is a sign of not thinking at the present moment, not that there is anything intrinsically bad about certain words or phrases.”

John Ashbery (1927–2017) poet from the United States

Source: Paris Review Interview (1983)

“Do not give way to useless alarm; though it is right to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“Consider the fact that, in a few years, I shall be dead. This fact can seem depressing. But the reality is only this. After a certain time, none of the thoughts and experiences that occur will be directly causally related to this brain, or be connected in certain ways to these present experiences. That is all this fact involves. And, in that description, my death seems to disappear.”

Derek Parfit book Reasons and Persons

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), p. 45

“I shall call Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions: …”

Louis Althusser book Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

the religious ISA (the system of the different churches),
the educational ISA (the system of the different public and private ‘schools’),
the family ISA,
the legal ISA,
the political ISA (the political system, including the different parties),
the trade-union ISA,
the communications ISA (press, radio and television, etc.),
the cultural ISA (literature, the arts, sports, etc.).
Source: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", p. 96

“It would seem like the present. He has a broader present. But his present lies ahead, not back. Our present is related to the past. Only the past is certain, to us. To him, the future is certain.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

The Golden Man (1954)
Context: "He can look ahead. See what's coming. He can — prethink. Let's call it that. He can see into the future. Probably he doesn't perceive it as the future."
"No," Anita said thoughtfully. "It would seem like the present. He has a broader present. But his present lies ahead, not back. Our present is related to the past. Only the past is certain, to us. To him, the future is certain. And he probably doesn't remember the past, any more than any animal remembers what happened."
"As he develops," Baines said, "as his race evolves, it'll probably expand its ability to prethink. Instead of ten minutes, thirty minutes. Then an hour. A day. A year. Eventually they'll be able to keep ahead a whole lifetime. Each one of them will live in a solid, unchanging world. There'll be no variables, no uncertainty. No motion! They won't have anything to fear. Their world will be perfectly static, a solid block of matter."
"And when death comes," Anita said, "they'll accept it. There won't be any struggle; to them, it'll already have happened."

“A computer chatted to itself in alarm as it noticed an airlock open and close itself for no apparent reason.
This was because Reason was in fact out to lunch.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The opportunity presented by European slave dealers became the major (though not the only) stimulus for a great deal of social violence between different African communities and within any given community. It took the form more of raiding and kidnapping than of regular warfare, and that fact increased the element of fear and uncertainty.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 149.

“The fact that the term fake news is now in the regular vocabulary of the American people is evidence enough Americans know the news is fake.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

"Hot Mic - Rejecting Fake News" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NShYFk9VCYs (25 July 2017)
2010s

“If certain facts present themselves with an alarming regularity”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Adolphe Quetelet 52

Related quotes

Related topics