Vol. I, Ch. 10, as translated by R. B. Haldane
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)
Context: Correct and accurate conclusions may be arrived at if we carefully observe the relation of the spheres of concepts, and only conclude that one sphere is contained in a third sphere, when we have clearly seen that this first sphere is contained in a second, which in its turn is contained in the third. On the other hand, the art of sophistry lies in casting only a superficial glance at the relations of the spheres of the concepts, and then manipulating these relations to suit our purposes, generally in the following way: — When the sphere of an observed concept lies partly within that of another concept, and partly within a third altogether different sphere, we treat it as if it lay entirely within the one or the other, as may suit our purpose.
Quotes about conclusion
page 10
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: By the seventeenth century, observers had reached the firm conclusion that American Indians were in no way inferior to Whites, and many writers took special pains to salute the Noble Red Man. The Jesuit missionary Bressani... reported that the inhabitants "are hardly barbarous, save in name.... marvelous faculty for remembering places, and for describing them to one another."... can recall things that a White "could not rehearse without writing." Another Jesuit enthusiastically corroborates... "nearly all show more intelligence in their business, speeches, courtesies, intercourse, tricks and subtleties, than do the shrewdest citizens and merchants in France."
Letter to H. L. Bulwer (1 Sept. 1839), quoted in Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer's Life of Palmerston (Philadelphia: J. B. Lipppincott, 1871), vol. 2, pp. 261-62. (Palmerston was criticizing descriptions of the Ottoman Empire as "decaying," etc.)
1830s
Context: Half the wrong conclusions at which mankind arrive are reached by the abuse of metaphors, or by mistaking general resemblance or imaginary similarity for real identity. Thus, people compare an ancient monarchy with an old building, an old tree, or an old man, and because the building, tree, or man must, from the nature of things, crumble, or decay, or die, they imagine that the same thing holds good with a community, and that the same laws which govern inanimate matter, or vegetable or animal life, govern also nations and states.
A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller Written by Himself, First Part.
First Part of Narrative
What I Didn't Find in Africa (2003)
Context: In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a white paper asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country.
Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.
The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation.
On Mind and Thought (1993), p. 34
Posthumous publications
Context: It is astonishingly beautiful and interesting, how thought is absent when you have an insight. Thought cannot have an insight. It is only when the mind is not operating mechanically in the structure of thought that you have an insight. Having had an insight, thought draws a conclusion from that insight. And then thought acts and thought is mechanical. So I have to find out whether having an insight into myself, which means into the world, and not drawing a conclusion from it is possible. If I draw a conclusion, I act on an idea, on an image, on a symbol, which is the structure of thought, and so I am constantly preventing myself from having insight, from understanding things as they are.
“All scientific conclusions are based on axioms, all reasoning depends ultimately upon faith.”
"The Holy Dimension", p. 338
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: Reality is not exhausted by knowledge. Inaccessible to research are the ultimate facts. All scientific conclusions are based on axioms, all reasoning depends ultimately upon faith. Faith is virgin thinking, preceding all transcendent knowledge. To believe is to abide at the extremities of spirit.
The Other World (1657)
Context: You imagine that what you can't understand is either spiritual or does not exist. The conclusion is quite wrong; rather there are obviously a million things in the universe that we would need a million quite different organs to understand. For example, I perceive by my senses what makes a magnet point north, what makes tides rise and fall, and what becomes of an animal after death. Your people are not proportioned to perceive such miracles, just as someone blind from birth cannot imagine the beauty of a landscape, the colors of a painting or the shadings of an iris. He will imagine them as something palpable, edible, audible or olfactory. Likewise, if I were to explain to you what I perceive by the senses you do not have, you would interpret it as something that could be heard, seen, touched, smelled or tasted; but it is not like that.
“The first cause of Absurd conclusions I ascribe to the want of Method;”
The First Part, Chapter 5, p. 20 (See also: Algorithms).
Leviathan (1651)
Context: The first cause of Absurd conclusions I ascribe to the want of Method; in that they begin not their Ratiocination from Definitions; that is, from settled significations of their words: as if they could cast account, without knowing the value of the numerall words, one, two, and three.
“It is too early yet to come to conclusions.”
Source: Infinite in All Directions (1988), Ch. 2 : Butterflies and Superstrings, p. 18
Context: What philosophical conclusions should we draw from the abstract style of the superstring theory? We might conclude, as Sir James Jeans concluded long ago, that the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a Pure Mathematician, and that if we work hard enough at mathematics we shall be able to read his mind. Or we might conclude that our pursuit of abstractions is leading us far away from those parts of the creation which are most interesting from a human point of view. It is too early yet to come to conclusions.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Sovereignty and World Order, 1999
Context: ... the incompetence of intelligence agencies is legendary.… Just take Vietnam.… In the late 1940s, the United States was kind of unclear about which side to support.… In the case of Indochina, for whatever reason, they decided at one point to support France in its reconquest of Indochina. Well, at that point, essentially orders went to the U. S. intelligence communities, CIA and others, to demonstrate … that Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh were agents of either the Russians or the Chinese.… They couldn't do it. They couldn't find anything.… The conclusion in the State Department was, "OK, this proves that they're agents of the international communist conspiracy. Ho Chi Minh is such a loyal slave of"—pick it, Mao or Stalin—"that he doesn't even need orders.".
Source: Nationalism and Culture (1937), Ch. 1 "The Insufficiency of Economic Materialism"
Context: Every process which arises from our physical being and is related to it, is an event which lies outside of our volition. Every social process, however, arises from human intentions and human goal setting and occurs within the limits of our volition. Consequently, it is not subject to the concept of natural necessity. … We are here stating no prejudiced opinion, but merely an established fact. Every result of human purposiveness is of indisputable importance for man's social existence, but we should stop regarding social processes as deterministic manifestations of a necessary course of events. Such a view can only lead to the most erroneous conclusions and contribute to a fatal confusion in our understanding of historical events.
It is doubtless the task of the historian to trace the inner connection of historical events and to make clear their causes and effects, but he must not forget that these connections are of a sort quite different from those of natural physical events and must therefore have quite a different valuation.
Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)
Context: As a rule, an individual is egotistic in the proportion that he lacks intelligence. The same is true of nations and races. The barbarian is egotistic enough to suppose that an Infinite Being is constantly doing something, or failing to do something, on his account. But as man rises in the scale of civilization, as he becomes really great, he comes to the conclusion that nothing in Nature happens on his account—that he is hardly great enough to disturb the motions of the planets.
“A free press is one where it's okay to state the conclusion you're led to by the evidence.”
Speech at the National Conference on Media Reform (15 May 2005) http://www.freepress.net/news/8120
Context: A free press is one where it's okay to state the conclusion you're led to by the evidence. One reason I'm in hot water is because my colleagues and I at NOW didn't play by the conventional rules of Beltway journalism. Those rules divide the world into Democrats & Republicans, liberals & conservatives, and allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if instead of reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news.
Second Lecture, The Elements of the Theory of Probability, p. 30
Probability, Statistics And Truth - Second Revised English Edition - (1957)
Introductory : The Problem
Progress and Poverty (1879)
Context: I propose in this inquiry to take nothing for granted, but to bring even accepted theories to the test of first principles, and should they not stand the test, freshly to interrogate facts in the endeavor to discover their law.
I propose to beg no question, to shrink from no conclusion, but to follow truth wherever it may lead. Upon us is the responsibility of seeking the law, for in the very heart of our civilization to-day women faint and little children moan. But what that law may prove to be is not our affair. If the conclusions that we reach run counter to our prejudices, let us not flinch; if they challenge institutions that have long been deemed wise and natural, let us not turn back.
2000s
Context: Antonin Scalia: It's erected as a war memorial. I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead. It's the — the cross is the — is the most common symbol of — of — of the resting place of the dead, and it doesn't seem to me — what would you have them erect? A cross — some conglomerate of a cross, a, and you know, a Moslem half moon and star?
Peter Eliasberg: Well, Justice Scalia, if I may go to your first point. The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of Christians. I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew. [Laughter. ] So it is the most common symbol to honor Christians.
Antonin Scalia: I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that's an outrageous conclusion.
“They are in all cases, and in the strictest sense of the term, probable conclusions”
Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. 4; Ch. 1. Nature And Design Of This Work
Context: The general laws of Nature are not, for the most part, immediate objects of perception. They are either inductive inferences from a large body of facts, the common truth in which they express, or, in their origin at least, physical hypotheses of a causal nature serving to explain phenomena with undeviating precision, and to enable us to predict new combinations of them. They are in all cases, and in the strictest sense of the term, probable conclusions, approaching, indeed, ever and ever nearer to certainty, as they receive more and more of the confirmation of experience. But of the character of probability, in the strict and proper sense of that term, they are never wholly divested. On the other hand, the knowledge of the laws of the mind does not require as its basis any extensive collection of observations. The general truth is seen in the particular instance, and it is not confirmed by the repetition of instances.
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Context: No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew. I am in a place, in a situation, as if I had materialized from cloud or risen out of the ground. There is a glad recognition of the long lost and the rest follows. Step by step the wonder of unexpected supply keeps growing. The impressions most useful to my purpose seem always those I was unaware of and so made no note of at the time when taken, and the conclusion is come to that like giants we are always hurling experience ahead of us to pave the future with against the day when we may Want to strike a line of purpose across it for somewhere. The line will have the more charm for not being mechanically straight. We enjoy the straight crookedness of a good walking stick. Modern instruments of precision are being used to make things crooked as if by eye and hand in the old days.
Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 10
Context: I fear, the inevitable conclusion we must all come to is, that in the world happiness is quite indefinable. We can no more grasp it than we can grasp the sun in the sky or the moon in the water. We can feel it interpenetrating our whole being with warmth and strength; we can see it in a pale reflection shining elsewhere; or in its total absence, we, walking in darkness, learn to appreciate what it is by what it is not.
As quoted by Felice Friedson, Iranian Crown Prince: Ahmadinejad's regime is "delicate and fragile" http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=459&page=2, August 12, 2010.
Interviews, 2010
“Lamarck was the first man whose conclusions on this subject were published in 1801.”
L'Origine des espèces, 1859
V. Coda
Why Not Socialism? (2009)
Justice Aggarwal, Para 3826
Quotes from the Judgment from Honorable Justice Agarwal, 2010
Speech to the 1900 Club at Grosvenor House, London (10 June 1936) on the Italo-Abyssinian War, quoted in The Times (11 June 1936), p. 10
Chancellor of the Exchequer
"The Scientific Aspect of Monte Carlo Roulette" (1894)
Committee on the Judiary, United States House of Representatives, Plaintiff, v. Donald F. McGahn II, Defendant. (Nov 25, 2019)
On her play Queen of Basel in “After a Hit With FX’s The Americans, Hilary Bettis Is Back in Theatre” http://www.playbill.com/article/after-a-hit-with-fxs-the-americans-hilary-bettis-is-back-in-theatre in Playbill (2019 Mar 29)
Source: 2010s, On Modi Time (2015), Chapter : Ayodhya Interview 2013
1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)
Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Perils of Over-population, pp. 161–162
1940s, Why Socialism? (1949)
Speech https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1931-01-26/debates/8a5b21f7-05dc-4c09-b195-075ec6261125/CommonsChamber in the House of Commons (26 January 1931) on Indian constitutional reform
1930s
Tony Benn interview “Hope is the key, Share International” https://share-international.org/magazine/old_issues/2003/jan_03.htm#benn (January 2003)
2000s
And the ghost of Bohr will laugh, and say, ‘I told you all along that the human mind cannot produce a realist interpretation of quantum mechanics’!
"A philosopher looks at quantum mechanics (again)", Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 56 (2005), 615–634
Letter to The Times (12 March 1985), p. 15
1980s
Speech at the at the 74th UN General Assembly. Statement by Mr. Jair Messias Bolsonaro, President of the Federative Republic of Brazil http://statements.unmeetings.org/GA74/BR_EN.pdf. United Nations PaperSmart (24 September 2019).
The Ocean of Theosophy by William Q. Judge (1893), Chapter 8, Of Reincarnation
The Source and Value of the "Mysteries" (1888)
"Interview with F.W. de Klerk", BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (9 May 1990)
1990s
“It takes little intelligence to draw the obvious conclusion…”
“Especially if one is blessed with only the barest information concerning other lands and peoples.”
Book 1, Chapter 2 “The Pearl at the Heart of the World” (p. 138)
The Elric Cycle, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)
Source: The Unfinished Autobiography (1951), Chapter IV - Part 1
Twitter post, https://twitter.com/Ocasio2018/status/1077776366450429958 (25 December 2018)
Twitter Quotes (2018)
19 December 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
May 1961 in address to joint session of congress https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/historic-speeches/address-to-joint-session-of-congress-may-25-196125
1961
Speech in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (29 November 1918), quoted in The Times (30 November 1918), p. 6
Prime Minister
Orest Slipak,brother of killed Vasyl Slipak Ukrainians bid their last farewells to opera singer Vasyl Slipak, laid to rest in Lviv // UT.Ukraine Today. - 2016. - July 1. http://uatoday.tv/society/ukrainians-bid-their-last-farewells-to-opera-singer-vasyl-slipak-laid-to-rest-in-lviv-684674.html
Michael Gove and Theresa May head five-way Conservative race https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36671336, BBC News, 30 June 2016
2016
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung article entitled “Die Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will” (“The past that will not pass: A speech that could be written but not delivered”), (June 6, 1986), Reprinted in Forever in the Shadow of Hitler? Translated by James Knowlton and Truett Cates, New Jersey: Humanities Press, (1993), pp. 22.
George Santayana, in a letter to Henry Ward Abbot, December 1886. As quoted in A Philosophical Novelist: George Santayana and The Last Puritan, edited by H. T. Kirby-Smith (Southern Illinois University Press, 1997)
S - Z, George Santayana
Early Indian history: Linguistic and textual parametres
Alfred Russel Wallace, The Wonderful Century: Its Successes and Its Failures. Toronto : G.N. Morang, 1898.
Goel, S. R. (2015). Hindu society under siege. (Ch. 3. The Residue of Christianism)
Excerpt from Democracy Now http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/12/4/watch_the_assassination_of_fred_hampton.
There is an abstract rationale of all conduct which is rational at alt, and a rationale of all social relations arising through the organization of rational activity.
Source: "The limitations of scientific method in economics", 1924, p. 127 (2009 edition)
Francis Low, a distinguished theoretical physicist then working at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, wrote in the introduction to this book quoted in Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman:A Legend of Modern Indian Science, 22 November 2013, Official Government of India's website Vigyan Prasar http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/scientists/cvraman/raman1.htm,
"The Old Man and the White Horse"
In the Eye of the Storm (1991)
Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years (1967)
"Civilization," London and Westminster Review (April 1836)
1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)
Ch 3
Man in Evolution (1941)
On the Defection of Eldridge Cleaver from the Black Panther Party and the Defection of the Black Panther Party from the Black Community
To Die For The People
Source: I Was There (1950), p. 442
Senate remarks on the Trump impeachment trial (2020)
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction , p. 608
The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction (1874)
Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 5 : Reciprocity
Science, if it ever learns the facts, probably will find another more definitely descriptive term.
As quoted in Thomas A. Edison, Benefactor of Mankind : The Romantic Life Story of the World's Greatest Inventor (1931) by Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ch. 25 : Edison's Views on Life — His Philosophy and Religion, p. 295
1930s
It does not. You cannot charge a woman $39.95 to hold the baby that she has just given birth to. You cannot constantly operate hospitals at close to capacity in order to maximize profits. The pursuit of private money in systems built for public good has not worked ethically or practically.
Coronavirus is revealing how broken America’s economy really is, 6 April 2020
Italics in the original. (WITZEL 2005:343) WITZEL 2005: Indocentrism: autochthonous visions of ancient India. Witzel, Michael. pp.341-404, in “The Indo-Aryan Controversy — Evidence and Inference in Indian history”, ed.Edwin F. Bryant and Laurie L. Patton, Routledge, London & New York, 2005. Quoted in https://talageri.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-aryan-story-vs-true-aryan-history.html
Dianne Feinstein in September 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/opinion/the-dogma-of-dianne-feinstein.html
About
Source: It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership (2012), p. xii
Talageri 2009:80
The Rigveda and the Avesta (2008)
Prime Minister's Questions https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2020-05-06/debates/FD4CE89E-F564-4D9F-B396-59684C404BB8/PrimeMinister (6 May 2020)
2020s, 2020
“Judges ought above all to remember the conclusion of the Roman Twelve Tables.”
The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Judicature
Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress
Source: Essays and Addresses, Vol. III- Evolution and Occultism (1913)
Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1878/apr/08/message-from-the-queen-army-reserve#column_836 in the House of Lords (8 April 1878)
1870s
p. 754 https://books.google.com/books?id=85o2AAAAMAAJ&pg=754
Medicine and Morality (1881)
Source: In Job's Balances: on the sources of the eternal truths, Foreword p. xxxix
September 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/opinion/the-dogma-of-dianne-feinstein.html to Amy Coney Barrett
Ali discussing his joruney to self-acceptence.
Source: The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018), p. 58