Source: Law and Authority (1886), IV
Context: The millions of laws which exist for the regulation of humanity appear upon investigation to be divided into three principal categories: protection of property, protection of persons, protection of government. And by analyzing each of these three categories, we arrive at the same logical and necessary conclusion: the uselessness and hurtfulness of law.
Quotes about investigator
page 7
Interview with J. Murphy and J. W. N. Sullivan (1930), p. 68
Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and Religion (1999)
Context: Speaking of the spirit that informs modern scientific investigations, I am of the opinion that all the finer speculations in the realm of science spring from a deep religious feeling, and that without such a feeling they would not be fruitful. I also believe that, this kind of religiousness, which makes itself felt today in scientific investigations, is the only creative religious activity of our time. The art of today can hardly be looked upon at all as expressive of our religious instincts.
"Introduction"
The Defendant (1901)
Context: Now it has appeared to me unfair that humanity should be engaged perpetually in calling all those things bad which have been good enough to make other things better, in everlastingly kicking down the ladder by which it has climbed. It has appeared to me that progress should be something else besides a continual parricide; therefore I have investigated the dust-heaps of humanity, and found a treasure in all of them. I have found that humanity is not incidentally engaged, but eternally and systematically engaged, in throwing gold into the gutter and diamonds into the sea.
Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)
Context: Definitions, like questions and metaphors, are instruments for thinking. Their authority rests entirely on their usefulness, not their correctness. We use definitions in order to delineate problems we wish to investigate, or to further interests we wish to promote. In other words, we invent definitions and discard them as suits our purposes. And yet, one gets the impression that... God has provided us with definitions from which we depart at the risk of losing our immortal souls. This is the belief that I have elsewhere called "definition tyranny," which may be defined... as the process of accepting without criticism someone else's definition of a word or a problem or a situation. I can think of no better method of freeing students from this obstruction of the mind than to provide them with alternative definitions of every concept and term with which they must deal in a subject. Whether it be "molecule," "fact," "law," "art," "wealth," "gene," or whatever, it is essential that students understand that definitions are hypotheses, and that embedded in them is a particular philosophical, sociological, or epistemological point of view.
Ostrom. 2014. Choice, Rules and Collective Action: The Ostrom's on the Study of Institutions and Governance. ECPR Press. Chapter 2: Polycentricty: The Structural Basis of Self-Governing Systems. p. 52
Context: The tensions inherent in the work of the scientific community are, however, exceptionally high because belief is potentially contestable. Inquiry in the scientific tradition represents, then, a challenge to every form of orthodoxy. Further, there is a danger that scientific investigators may abandon modesty, presume to know the Truth, and create their own form of orthodoxy, while engaging in sweeping rejections of other forms of belief and failing to pursue the merit of the arguments that may be at issue. Dogmas advanced in the name of science are no less dogmatic than other dogmas. Efforts to destroy or silence others is a manifestation of dominance strategies that are repugnant to polycentricty in scientific communities. A repudation of religion, as such, fails to indicate an appreaciation of those who teach that nature is the creation of a trascendent order. The study of nature as God's creation can provide scientific investigators with an appreciation for the existence of an order that gives coherence to all other forms of order. This is consistent with a presumption that a universe exists. Science as a polycentric order depends, then, upon an autonomous pursuit of inquiry that requires a reciprocal respect for the autonomy of others.
1880s, Agnosticism (1889)
Context: The extent of the region of the uncertain, the number of the problems the investigation of which ends in a verdict of not proven, will vary according to the knowledge and the intellectual habits of the individual agnostic. I do not very much care to speak of anything as unknowable. What I am sure about is that there are many topics about which I know nothing, and which, so far as I can see, are out of reach of my faculties. But whether these things are knowable by any one else is exactly one of those matters which is beyond my knowledge, though I may have a tolerably strong opinion as to the probabilities of the case.
Source: A Manual of the Steam Engine and Other Prime Movers (1859), p. 31
Context: Hypothesis Of Molecular Vortices. In thermodynamics as well as in other branches of molecular physics, the laws of phenomena have to a certain extent been anticipated, and their investigation facilitated, by the aid of hypotheses as to occult molecular structures and motions with which such phenomena are assumed to be connected. The hypothesis which has answered that purpose in the case of thermodynamics, is called that of "molecular vortices," or otherwise, the "centrifugal theory of elasticity. (On this subject, see the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, 1849; Edinburgh Transactions, vol. xx.; and Philosophical Magazine, passim, especially for December, 1851, and November and December, 1855.)
From Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1 (1947/1991)
Context: The method of Marx and Engels consists precisely in a search for the link which exists between what men think, desire, say and believe for themselves and what they are, what they do. This link always exists. It can be explored in two directions. On the one hand, the historian or the man of action can proceed from ideas to men, from consciousness to being - i. e. towards practical, everyday reality - bringing the two into confrontation and thereby achieving archieving criticism of ideas by action and realities. That is the direction which Marx and Engels nearly always followed in everything they wrote; and it is the direction which critical and constructive method must follow initially if it is to take a demonstrable shape and achieve results.
But it is equally possible to follow this link in another direction, taking real life as the point of departure in an investigation of how the ideas which express it and the forms of consciousness which reflect it emerge. The link, or rather the network of links between the two poles will prove to be complex. It must be unravelled, the thread must be carefully followed. In this way we can arrive at a criticism of life by ideas which in a sense extends and completes the first procedure.
The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Duty of Inquiry
Context: No man holding a strong belief on one side of a question, or even wishing to hold a belief on one side, can investigate it with such fairness and completeness as if he were really in doubt and unbiased; so that the existence of a belief not founded on fair inquiry unfits a man for the performance of this necessary duty.
Nor is it that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it. He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart. If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future. It goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link between sensation and action at every moment of all our lives, and which is so organized and compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the rest, but every new addition modifies the structure of the whole. No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character for ever.
Ideology and Utopia (1929)
Context: The non-evaluative general total conception of ideology is to be found primarily in those historical investigations, where, provisionally and for the sake of the simplification of the problem, no judgments are pronounced as to the correctness of the ideas to be treated. This approach confines itself to discovering the relations between certain mental structures and the life-situations in which they exist. We must constantly ask ourselves how it comes about that a given type of social situation gives rise to a given interpretation. Thus the ideological element in human thought, viewed at this level, is always bound up with the existing life-situation of the thinker. According to this view human thought arises, and operates, not in a social vacuum but in a definite social milieu.
The reference to Cassius is that of the character in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. Listen to an mp3 sound file http://www.otr.com/murrow_mccarthy.shtml of parts of this statement.
See It Now (1954)
Context: No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind as between the internal and the external threats of communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." Good night, and good luck.
Homilies of Science p. 15
Homilies of Science 1892
Context: Some imagine that science is limited to the lower sorts of natural facts only. Religious and moral facts have been too little heeded by our scientists. Thus people came to think that science and religion move in two different spheres. That is not so. The facts of our soul-life must be investigated and stated with scientific accuracy, and our clergy should be taught to purify religion with the criticism of scientific methods. They need not fear for their religious ideals. So far as they are true, and their moral kernel is true, they will not suffer in the crucible of science. Religion will not lose one iota of its grandeur, if it is based upon a scientific foundation; all that it will lose is the errors that are connected with religion and the sooner they are lost the better for us.
Source: The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus on the First Book of Euclid's Elements Vol. 1 (1788), Ch. IV.
1810s, What do we mean by the American Revolution? (1818)
Context: By what means this great and important alteration in the religious, moral, political, and social character of the people of thirteen colonies, all distinct, unconnected, and independent of each other, was begun, pursued, and accomplished, it is surely interesting to humanity to investigate, and perpetuate to posterity.
To this end, it is greatly to be desired, that young men of letters in all the States, especially in the thirteen original States, would undertake the laborious, but certainly interesting and amusing task, of searching and collecting all the records, pamphlets, newspapers, and even handbills, which in any way contributed to change the temper and views of the people, and compose them into an independent nation.
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis
Context: When at the beginning of the so-called modern age, at the Renaissance, the pagan sense of religion came to life again, it took the concrete form in the knightly ideal with its codes of conduct of love and honor. But it was a paganism Christianized, baptized. "Woman — la donna — was the divinity enshrined within those savage breasts. Whosoever will investigate the memorials of primitive times will find this ideal of woman in its full force and purity; the Universe is woman.
"Robert Anton Wilson on Wilhelm Reich" (March 1995)
Context: He {Wilhelm Reich} had a great capacity to arouse irrational hatred obviously, and that's because his ideas were radical in the most extreme sense of the word "radical." His ideas have something to offend everybody, and he ended up becoming the only heretic in American history whose books were literally burned by the government.
Timothy Leary spent five years in prison for unorthodox scientific ideas. Ezra Pound spent 13 years in a nuthouse for unorthodox political and economic ideas. Their books were not burned.
Reich was not only thrown in prison, but they chopped up all the scientific equipment in his laboratory with axes and burned all of his books in an incinerator. Now that interests me as a civil liberties issue.
When I started studying Reich's works, I went through a period of enthusiasm, followed by a period of skepticism, followed by a period of just continued interest, but I think a lot of his ideas probably were sound. A lot probably were unsound. And, I'm not a Reichian in the sense of somebody who thinks he was the greatest scientist who ever lived and discovered the basic secrets of psychology, physics and everything else, all in one lifetime. But I think he has enough sound ideas that his unpopular ideas deserve further investigation.
The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (2005).
Context: My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation: if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.
What Would You Substitute for the Bible as a Moral Guide? (1900)
Context: What then is, or can be called, a moral guide? The shortest possible answer is one word: Intelligence. We want the experience of mankind, the true history of the race. We want the history of intellectual development, of the growth of the ethical, of the idea of justice, of conscience, of charity, of self-denial. We want to know the paths and roads that have been traveled by the human mind. These facts in general, these histories in outline, the results reached, the conclusions formed, the principles evolved, taken together, would form the best conceivable moral guide. We cannot depend on what are called “inspired books,” or the religions of the world. These religions are based on the supernatural, and according to them we are under obligation to worship and obey some supernatural being, or beings. All these religions are inconsistent with intellectual liberty. They are the enemies of thought, of investigation, of mental honesty. They destroy the manliness of man. They promise eternal rewards for belief, for credulity, for what they call faith. This is not only absurd, but it is immoral.
Source: No Ordinary Genius (1994), p. 251-252, from interview in "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" (1981): video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEwUwWh5Xs4&t=45m21s
(Also in book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999) p. 23.)
Context: People say to me, "Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?" No, I'm not. I'm just looking to find out more about the world and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it; that would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it's like an onion with millions of layers and we're just sick and tired of looking at the layers, then that's the way it is!… And therefore when we go to investigate we shouldn’t pre-decide what it is we are trying to do except to find out more about it… My interest in science is to simply find out more about the world.
1810s, What do we mean by the American Revolution? (1818)
Context: The colonies had grown up under constitutions of government so different, there was so great a variety of religions, they were composed of so many different nations, their customs, manners, and habits had so little resemblance, and their intercourse had been so rare, and their knowledge of each other so imperfect, that to unite them in the same principles in theory and the same system of action, was certainly a very difficult enterprise. The complete accomplishment of it, in so short a time and by such simple means, was perhaps a singular example in the history of mankind. Thirteen clocks were made to strike together — a perfection of mechanism, which no artist had ever before effected.
In this research, the gloriole of individual gentlemen, and of separate States, is of little consequence. The means and the measures are the proper objects of investigation. These may be of use to posterity, not only in this nation, but in South America and all other countries. They may teach mankind that revolutions are no trifles; that they ought never to be undertaken rashly; nor without deliberate consideration and sober reflection; nor without a solid, immutable, eternal foundation of justice and humanity; nor without a people possessed of intelligence, fortitude, and integrity sufficient to carry them with steadiness, patience, and perseverance, through all the vicissitudes of fortune, the fiery trials and melancholy disasters they may have to encounter.
"A Dissertation on the Doctrine of Ideas, &c." Footnote: see second book of Aristotle's Metaphysics.
The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus on the First Book of Euclid's Elements Vol. 1 (1788)
"American Extreme" in Senses of Cinema http://sensesofcinema.com/2016/american-extreme/introduction-american-extreme/?fbclid=IwAR3RDbEMlJKfP_tUFAOt3apUoZ99oioJ5kFwJfPO3wBnu1PGC0Xmtpnf9pY (2016)
Committee on the Judiary, United States House of Representatives, Plaintiff, v. Donald F. McGahn II, Defendant. (Nov 25, 2019)
Committee on the Judiary, United States House of Representatives, Plaintiff, v. Donald F. McGahn II, Defendant. (Nov 25, 2019)
Committee on the Judiary, United States House of Representatives, Plaintiff, v. Donald F. McGahn II, Defendant. (Nov 25, 2019)
Irfan Habib, ‘Problems of Marxist historiography,’ Social Scientist, Volume 16, Number 12, December 1988
President Maduro's speech at the United Nations General Assembly (excerpts), 26 September 2018
President Maduro's speech at the United Nations General Assembly (excerpts), 26 September 2018
Trump Must Not Be Allowed to Use Gulf of Oman Incidents as 'Pretext for Illegal War With Iran': Bernie Sanders, Common Dreams, Andrea Germanos, https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/14/trump-must-not-be-allowed-use-gulf-oman-incidents-pretext-illegal-war-iran-bernie (14 June 2019)
2010s, 2019, June 2019
Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section IV On The Principle Of The Form Of The Intelligible World
After Ron Suskind Reveals Bush Admin Ordered Iraq-9/11 Fakery, House Judiciary Chair John Conyers Opens Congressional Probe https://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/14/after_ron_suskind_reveals_bush_admin, DemocracyNow! (14 August 2008)
“A totalitarian political religion is incompatible with free investigation.”
Gulf (p. 545)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)
Jules Smith, in William Dalrymple: Critical Perspective http://literature.britishcouncil.org/william-dalrymple, 2007, British Council.
About William Dalrymple
Wang Kwo-tsai (2019) cited in " NSB officials used Presidential Office trucks: lawmaker http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2019/07/25/2003719283" on Taipei Times, 25 July 2019
Speech in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (29 November 1918), quoted in The Times (30 November 1918), p. 6
Prime Minister
The Journey of the Mind to God
"classical Greek" here refers to Greek in the classical period spanning approximately the time between 5th and 4th centuries BC, i.e., in contrast to Homeric Greek from Archaic Greece.
Source: The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought (1953), p. 1
He proves from many Indian writings that it is an epithet of praise which is applied to various deities, and does not represent the conception of perfection or unity which we associate with it. This is a mistake, for Brahma is in one aspect the One, the Immutable, who has, however, the element of change in him, and because of this, the rich variety of forms which is thus essentially his own is also predicated of him. Vishnu is also called the Supreme Brahma. Water and the sun are Brahma.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with a work on the proofs of the existence of God. Vol 2 Translated from the 2d German ed. 1895 Ebenezer Brown Speirs 1854-1900, and J Burdon Sanderson p. 27
Lectures on Philosophy of Religion, Volume 2
About a program to develop a rocket. In HyperNormalization. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh2cDKyFdyU&t=59m54s
Interviews
[Jeremy Scahill Testifies Before Congress on America's Secret Wars, The Nation, http://www.thenation.com/blog/156977/jeremy-scahill-testifies-congress-americas-secret-wars#, December 9, 2010, January 2, 2013]
Jules Bernard Luys, in Pamphlets on hypnotism (1892) http://books.google.co.in/books?ei=-2xvU7rZLIXc8AW9i4CwAQ, pp.898-99.
Preface
A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts (1807)
The whole of this part of the subject depends on the consideration of the Intrinsic Energy of a system of bodies, as depending on the temperature and physical state, as well as the form, motion, and relative position of these bodies. Of this energy, however, only a part is available for the purpose of producing mechanical work, and though the energy itself is indestructible, the available part is liable to diminution by the action of certain natural processes, such as conduction and radiation of heat, friction, and viscosity. These processes, by which energy is rendered unavailable as a source of work, are classed together under the name of the Dissipation of Energy.
Theory of Heat http://books.google.com/books?id=DqAAAAAAMAAJ "Preface" (1871)
Ch 2
Man in Evolution (1941)
Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts
with very little knowledge of just how deadly is this disease.
2020, End the Shutdown; It’s Time for Resurrection!
“That's why I told Callamard, if you investigate me, I'll slap you.”
Targeted remarks to personalities and institutions
Original: (tl) On UN Special Rapporteur Agnès Callamard: Kaya sabi ko, Callamard, kung imbestigahan mo ako, sampalin kita.
Interaksyon WATCH | Duterte again hits Callamard: ‘Kung imbestigahan mo ako, sampalin kita!’ https://www.interaksyon.com/breaking-news/2017/11/10/108089/watch-duterte-again-hits-callamard-kung-imbestigahan-mo-ako-sampalin-kita/
Sermon on the Apostles' Creed (1273), prologue (trans. Joseph B. Collins)
Source: Philosophical Sketches (1962), Ch. 9, p. 160
5 March 2019 http://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/all-in/2019-03-05
Of the Imperfection of The Chymist's Doctrine of Qualities (1675)
Boris Johnson: Money Spent Investigating Historical Child Abuse Is "Spaffed Up The Wall" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_FSqfXyUFk, LBC, 14 March 2019
2010s, 2019
Source: Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy (2021), p. 18
"Re-elected President Tran Dai Quang gives media interview" in Nhân Dân https://en.nhandan.vn/politics/domestic/item/4492502-re-elected-president-tran-dai-quang-gives-media-interview.html (26 July 2016)
Source: Talk at the Peking Forum on Literature and Art (9 and 12 November 1967)
“I'm the most investigated innocent person in America.”
Post Presidential Election
Source: Xan Brooks. " 'As guarded as Fort Knox': the inside story of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign https://web.archive.org/web/20210305072249/https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/jun/03/hillary-clinton-nanette-burstein-interview-presidential-campaign", theguardian.com, 3 juni 2020.
Source: 22 October 2021 https://twitter.com/AlecBaldwin/status/1451572461787439106 by Alec Baldwin the day after Alec killed her with a firearm
“The police don't normally look back and investigate things that have taken place a year ago.”
2020s, 2021
Source: Interviewed on the BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-59532832, talking about enquiries into alleged Downing Street parties during COVID restrictions (5 December 2021)
Source: "Rep. Katie Hill threatens legal action after another conservative outlet publishes her nude photo" https://www.salon.com/2019/10/25/rep-katie-hill-threatens-legal-action-after-another-conservative-outlet-publishes-her-nude-photo/, Salon (October 25, 2019)
Source: God of the Oppressed (1975, 1997), p. 115 (1975 edition)
A Poisoned Arrow (1962) (excerpts)