Quotes about method (1831 quotes, page 18)

“Sad is a fake word for me to be using, I am still angry that their reason for disagreeing with McCarthy was too often his crude methods.... Many of the anti-Communists were, of course, honest men. But none of them... has stepped forward to admit a mistake. It is not necessary in this country; they too know that we are a people who do not remember much. I have written here that I have recovered. I mean it only in a worldly sense because I do not believe in recovery. The past, with its pleasures, its rewards, its foolishness, its punishments, is there for each of us forever, and it should be.”

Lillian Hellman (1905–1984) American dramatist and screenwriter

Source: Scoundrel Time (1976), p. 150

Country , Past , People , Pleasure

“In meditation one is just One. One becomes the Self. The method of meditation is only a process by which this is made possible.”

Shantananda Saraswati (1934–2005) Hindu spiritual teacher

Good Company. The Study Society.2009

Self-confidence

“No fresh European war is capable of putting something better in the place of unsatisfactory conditions which exist to-day. … The outbreak of such madness without end would lead to the collapse of existing social order in Europe. … The German Government are convinced that to-day there can be only one great task, and that it to assure the peace of the world. … The German Government wish to settle all difficult questions with other Governments by peaceful methods. … The German people have no thought of invading any country.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech in Berlin (17 May 1933), quoted in The Times (26 September 1939), p. 9
1930s

Peace , Country , Question , War

“Though there are important differences among species, there is reason to be optimistic that these methods can provide useful interventions for humans…This paper and related studies have the potential for huge clinical impact in Alzheimer’s disease and others involving brain inflammation.”

Nancy Kopell (1942) American mathematician

Brain wave stimulation may improve Alzheimer’s symptoms, Massachusetts Institute of Technology News, Anne Trafton, http://news.mit.edu/2019/brain-wave-stimulation-improve-alzheimers-0314 (14 March 2019)

Study , Relation ships , Disease

“I think there is a strong reason for having PR as the method of election to the House of Lords because I do not think anyone would want to reproduce the House of Commons of the day in the second Chamber.”

Alec Douglas-Home (1903–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Press conference at Conservative Central Office (20 March 1978), quoted in The Times (21 March 1978), p. 2
Later life

Strong , Thinking , Housing

“Should Latin America and the Caribbean accept these methods that so hurt our region in the entire 20th century? How many military interventions? How many coup d’états? How many dictatorships were imposed during the long and dark 20th century in Latin America and the Caribbean, and who did it favor? Did it favor the Peoples? What interests did they represent? The interests of the transnational companies, the unpopular interests; long dictatorships, like Augusto Pinochet’s in Chile, were faced by our peoples due to the stubbornness of the American elites…”

Nicolás Maduro (1962) 53rd President of Venezuela

President Maduro's speech at the United Nations General Assembly (excerpts), 26 September 2018

Hurt , People

“The sicker that Hitler grew and the worse the military situation became, the fewer were the number of people who could reach the dictator. Everything had to be done through this sinister guttersnipe, Bormann, and thus his methods became increasingly successful. I had repeated angry altercations with him, because over and over again he would sabotage the taking of necessary military measures for the sake of the obscure political game that he was playing. He would also attempt to interfere in matters that purely concerned the Army, always with unfortunate results. Bormann was the éminence grise of the Third Reich.”

Martin Bormann (1900–1945) Nazi leader and private secretary to Adolf Hitler

Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader (1990), p. 449

Game , People , Success

“It is helpful to recall that the death of the person is a single event, consisting in the total disintegration of that unitary and integrated whole that is the personal self. The death of the person, understood in this primary sense, is an event which no scientific technique or empirical method can identify directly.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Human experience shows that once death occurs certain biological signs inevitably follow, which medicine has learnt to recognize with increasing precision. In this sense, the "criteria" for ascertaining death used by medicine today should not be understood as the technical-scientific determination of the exact moment of a person's death, but as a scientifically secure means of identifying the biological signs that a person has indeed died.
Address to the 18th International Congress of the Transplantation Society, 29 August 2000

Personality , Help , Self-confidence , Sense

“The proletariat should not ignore peaceful methods of struggle — they serve its ordinary, day-to-day interests, they are necessary in periods of preparation for revolution — but it must never forget that in certain conditions the class struggle assumes the form of armed conflict and civil war; there are times when the interests of the proletariat call for ruthless extermination of its enemies in open armed clashes. This was first demonstrated by the French proletariat in the Commune and brilliantly confirmed by the Russian proletariat in the December uprising.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"Lessons of the Commune" http://www.marx.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mar/23.htm, Collected Works, Vol. 13.
Collected Works

Peace , Time , War , Forgetting

“One will readily agree that any army which does not train to use all the weapons, all the means and methods of warfare that the enemy possesses, or may posses, is behaving in an unwise or even criminal manner. This applies to politics even more than it does to the art of war.”

Vladimir Lenin book "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder

CH 10
"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)

Training , War , Art

“One step forward, two steps back. … It happens in the lives of individuals, and it happens in the history of nations and in the development of parties. It would be the most criminal cowardice to doubt even for a moment the inevitable and complete triumph of the principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy, of proletarian organization and Party discipline. We have already won a great deal, and we must go on fighting, undismayed by reverses, fighting steadfastly, scorning the philistine methods of circle wrangling, doing our very utmost to preserve the hard-won single Party tie linking all Russian Social-Democrats, and striving by dint of persistent and systematic work to give all Party members, and the workers in particular, a full and conscious understanding of the duties of Party members, of the struggle and Second Party Congress, of all the causes and all the stages of our divergence, and of the utter and disastrousness of opportunism., which, in the sphere of our programme and our tactics, helplessly surrenders to the bourgeois psychology, uncritically adopts the point of view of bourgeois democracy, and blunts the weapon of the class struggle of the proletariat.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Lenin Anthology, p. 119
1900s, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (1904)

Democracy , Fight , Understanding , History

“I expect that soon the failure of the attempts to transform Russia into a Socialist community by methods of dictatorship will become apparent to all. The failure of the Communist experiment in Russia, however, does not mean the downfall of the Bolshevik regime. The two things are not necessarily linked together. Nay, they are mutually exclusive. The same backwardness that makes Socialism in Russia at the present time impossible favors the strengthening of despotism once it has taken root.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

Chap. IV, Democracy and Dictatorship
“Marxism and Bolshevism: Democracy and Dictatorship,” (1934) http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1934/bolshevism/index.htm

Making love , Time , Failure , Communication

“The worst reproach that Engels could make against the first English Marxists was that they were applying Marxism in a sectarian spirit. What would he have said, had he lived to see it, about a school of Marxists who after succeeding in capturing the state power proceeded to make a state religion of Marxism, a religion whose articles of faith and their interpretation are watched over by the government, a religion, the criticism of which, nay, the slightest deviation from which, is sternly punished by the State; a Marxism ruling by the methods of the Spanish Inquisition, propagated with fire and sword, practicing a theatrical ritual, as illustrated by the embalmed body of Lenin: a Marxism reduced to the status not only of a state religion but of a medieval or oriental faith? Such a Marxism may indeed be called a doctrinaire fanaticism.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

Chap. I, The Beginnings of Marxism
“Marxism and Bolshevism: Democracy and Dictatorship,” (1934) http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1934/bolshevism/index.htm

School , Faith , Religion , Making love

“The well being of others is on an average as important as our own, and should as a general thing be appraised at the same value. If a certain amount of happiness is scheduled to fall to the lot of the earth, it makes absolutely no difference whether it falls on me, or on you, or on somebody a thousand miles away. It would serve the ends of absolute ethics quite as well if it fell on an insect or a horse as if it fell on a man. The only important thing from the standpoint of universal good is that the pleasure be experienced. It is not important what particular individual or species is the beneficiary. It might even go to another world, and be just as satisfactory to a universal well-wisher, who looked at Cosmos from the serene altitudes of pure reason, without any prejudices whatever one way or another in the matter. This is the ideal. It is a long, long way from our natures. But only in so far as we approximate this ideal do we rise above those imperfections of our being which have been ground out by the methods that have operated in the development of life on earth.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Ethics and Education (1912), Contents of Ethics, pp. 54–55

Nature , Pleasure , Universe , Horse

“Every crime almost is a good thing, looked at from the exclusive standpoint of the criminal. If it were not so, it would never be committed. But from the standpoint of the one on whom the crime falls it is likely to be a very different thing—how different depends on the degree of diversity of the interests involved. The only rational method of judging conduct, and the only method that should ever be employed by beings pretending to be logical or civilised, is to balance the effects which the act on trial has on the different interests involved, and then render a verdict from the standpoint of this balance, which is the standpoint of the universe.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), Human Attitude Toward Others, p. 53

Universe , Dependency

“Revision of character will be a much more tangible and scientific thing when the physiology of psychology becomes more than a controverted conjecture. There has been no attempt, no methodical attempt, to amend character thru physiological and neural violence; and about all we know about the possibilities of such a surgery consists of glimpses caught on occasions of casualty. We do know, however, that neural changes appear promptly and invariably in consciousness, and that there is every reason to suspect perfect parallelism between the neural and psychic processes. This unfailing attendance and dependence of mind on physical phenomena, and the superior tangibility of matter over consciousness, assure the prophet that an accomplished and sensitized attention is the all-essential to the achievement of psychical amendment by neural and physiological alteration. In the New Age which we prevision and approach, among the marvels to amaze our clumsy contemplations will be the miracles of cerebral surgery, the physics of the humors, the science of the physiology of consciousness.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), Individual Culture, pp. 274–275

Dependency , Perfection , Appearance , Age

“There is the sharp and bitter division between Socialists and Communists, principally on the important question of method and tactics. In general, however, Socialists propose to bring about as rapidly as possible the social ownership of land, sources and the principle means of production, thereby abolishing the possibility of the existence of any class on an income derived not from work but from ownership. This does not necessarily mean that no man will have a home he can call his own. His right will rest on use and not on a title deed.”

Norman Thomas (1884–1968) American Presbyterian minister and socialist

"Why I Am A Socialist", Princeton Alumni Weekly, 1928. Reprinted in Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John Campbell McMillian, The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Tradition, The New Press, 2011.

Home , Question

“Socialism is directed towards a social-ethical end. Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and — if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous — are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society. For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, Why Socialism? (1949)

Problem , Science , Personality , Question

“Birth control - individual choice, safe contraceptive methods, as well as abortions when necessary - is a fundamental prerequisite for the emancipation of women.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

Source: Women, Race and Class (1983), Chapter 12, "Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights"

Birth , Women

“Suez was a totally unsuccessful attempt to achieve unreasonable and undesirable objectives by methods which were at once reckless and immoral; and the consequences, as was well deserved, were humiliating and disastrous.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

The Labour Case (Penguin, 1959), p. 14
1950s

“This country cannot afford now—if it ever could afford—unofficial strikes, wasteful stoppages, long, weary arguments about industrial demarcation, any more than we can afford out-of-date industrial methods, industrial promotion based on influence and connexion rather than technical ability, or management attitudes which give a higher priority to tax avoidance or the earning of quick, uncovenanted capital profits than to modernization and innovation in industrial production methods, or aggressiveness in exports.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Brighton (12 December 1964), quoted in The Times (14 December 1964), p. 14
Prime Minister

Country

“The dictator does not consider his power firmly established until he has reached the point where there is no man under him who is of any worth. … This method tyrants use of stultifying their subjects cannot be more clearly observed than in what Cyrus did with the Lydians after he had taken Sardis, their chief city, and had at his mercy the captured Croesus, their fabulously rich king. When news was brought to him that the people of Sardis had rebelled, it would have been easy for him to reduce them by force; but being unwilling either to sack such a fine city or to maintain an army there to police it, he thought of an unusual expedient for reducing it. He established in it brothels, taverns, and public games, and issued the proclamation that the inhabitants were to enjoy them. He found this type of garrison so effective that he never again had to draw the sword against the Lydians. These wretched people enjoyed themselves inventing all kinds of games, so that the Latins have derived the word from them, and what we call pastimes they call ludi, as if they meant to say Lydi. Not all tyrants have manifested so clearly their intention to effeminize their victims; but in fact, what the aforementioned despot publicly proclaimed and put into effect, most of the others have pursued secretly as an end.”

Étienne de La Boétie book Discourse on Voluntary Servitude

Part 2
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)

Game , Drawing , People

“The method of the science not being practiced much nowadays, except what logic prescribes to all sciences generally, that fitted for the peculiar nature of metaphysics being simply ignored, it is no wonder that those who everlastingly turn the Sisyphean stone of this inquiry do not seem so far to have made much progress. Though here I neither can nor will expatiate upon so important and extensive a subject, I shall briefly shadow forth what constitutes no despicable part of this method, namely, the infection between sensuous and intellectual cognition, not only as creeping in on those incautious in the application of principles, but even producing spurious principles under the appearance of axioms.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section V On The Method Respecting The Sensuous And The Intellectual In Metaphysics

Science , Appearance , Parting , Nature

“The use of the intellect in the sciences whose primitive concepts as well as axioms are given by sensuous intuition is only logical, that is, by it we only subordinate cognitions to one another according to their relative universality conformably to the principle of contradiction, phenomena to more general phenomena, and consequences of pure intuition to intuitive axioms. But in pure philosophy, such as metaphysics, in which the use of the intellect in respect to principles is real, that is to say, where the primary concept of things and relations and the very axioms are given originally by the pure intellect itself, and not being intuitions do not enjoy immunity from error, the method precedes the whole science, and whatever is attempted before its precepts are thoroughly discussed and firmly established is looked upon as rashly conceived and to be rejected among vain instances of mental playfulness.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section V On The Method Respecting The Sensuous And The Intellectual In Metaphysics

Universe , Science , Error , Relation ships

“The details supplied by Khrushchev on Stalin’s methods … lead us to believe in the existence in these countries of a veritable state capitalism, exploiting the working class in a manner not very different from the way the working class is used in capitalist countries.”

Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) Martiniquais politician

Letter to Maurice Thorez resigning from the French Communist Party, October 24, 1956

Way , Country

“That I address you as a friend is no formality. I own no foes. My business in life has been for the past 33 years to enlist the friendship of the whole of humanity by befriending mankind, irrespective of race, colour or creed. … We have no doubt about your bravery or devotion to your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents… But your own writings and pronouncements and those of your friends and admirers leave no room for doubt that many of your acts are monstrous and unbecoming of human dignity, especially in the estimation of men like me who believe in human friendliness. Such are your humiliation of Czechoslovakia, the rape of Poland and the swallowing of Denmark. I am aware that your view of life regards such spoliations as virtuous acts. But we have been taught from childhood to regard them as acts degrading humanity…Hence we cannot possibly wish success to your arms…. But ours is a unique position. We resist British imperialism no less than Nazism… If there is a difference, it is in degree. One-fifth of the human race has been brought under the British heel by means that will not bear scrutiny… Our resistance to it does not mean harm to the British people. We seek to convert them, not to defeat them on the battle-field… No spoliator can compass his end without a certain degree of co-operation, willing or unwilling, of the victim…. The rulers may have our land and bodies but not our souls…. We know what the British heel means for us and the non-European races of the world. But we would never wish to end the British rule with German aid… We have found in non-violence a force which, if organized, can without doubt match itself against a combination of all the most violent forces in the world… If not the British, some other power will certainly improve upon your method and beat you with your own weapon. You are leaving no legacy to your people of which they would feel proud.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Letter to Hitler. 24 December 1940. Quoted from Koenraad Elst: Return of the Swastika (2007). (Also in https://web.archive.org/web/20100310135408/http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/fascism/gandhihitler.html)
1940s

Childhood , Soul , Friendship , Success

“It is quite clear that you are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to the savage state. Must you pay that price for an object however worthy it may appear to you to be? Will you listen to the appeal of one who has deliberately shunned the method of war not without considerable success?”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Letter addressed to Hitler. 23 July 1939 (Collected Works, vol. 70, pp. 20–21), Quoted from Koenraad Elst: Return of the Swastika (2007). (Also in https://web.archive.org/web/20100310135408/http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/fascism/gandhihitler.html)
1930s

Success , War , Personality , Appearance

“Thus liberalism, democracy, and socialism appear to be, as they are in reality, not only the offspring of one and the same theory of government but also logical derivations one of the other. Logically, developed liberalism leads to democracy; the logical development of democracy issues into socialism. It is true that for many years, and with some justification, socialism was looked upon as antithetical to liberalism. But the antithesis is purely relative and breaks down as we approach the common origin and foundation of the two doctrines, for we find that the opposition is one of method, not of purpose.”

Alfredo Rocco (1875–1935) Italian politician and jurist

The end is the same for both, namely, the welfare of the individual members of society. The difference lies in the fact that liberalism would be guided to its goal by liberty, whereas socialism strives to attain it by the collective organization of production.
Source: The Political Doctrine of Fascism (1925), pp. 108-109

Democracy , Appearance , Reality

“In beginning this practice of meditation it is desirable to watch closely its physical effects. Methods prescribed by those who understand the matter ought never to cause headache or any other pain, yet such results do sometimes occur in particular cases. It is true that meditation strains the thought and attention a little further than its customary point in any individual, but that should be so carefully done, so free from any kind of excess, as not to cause any physical ill-effects. Sometimes a person takes it up too strenuously and for too long at a time, or when the body is not in a fit state of health, and the consequence is a certain amount of suffering. It is fatally easy to press one’s physical brain just a little too far, and when that happens it is often difficult to recover equilibrium. Sometimes a condition may be produced in a few days which it will take years to set right; so anyone who begins to feel any unpleasant effects should at once stop the practice for a while and attend to his physical health, and if possible consult someone who knows more than he does about the subject.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: The Masters and the Path (1925), Ch.4

Pain , Time , Understanding , Personality

“The Effect of Meditation. Remember also that every one who meditates upon the Master makes a definite connection with him, which shows itself to clairvoyant vision as a kind of line of light. The Master always subconsciously feels the impinging of such a line, and sends out in response a steady stream of magnetism which continues to play long after the meditation is over. The methodical practice of such meditation and concentration is thus of the utmost help to the aspirant, and regularity is one of the most important factors in producing the result. It should be undertaken daily at the same hour, and we should steadily persevere with it, even though no obvious effect may be produced. When no result appears we must be especially careful to avoid depression, because that makes it more difficult for a Master’s influence to act upon us, and it also shows that we are thinking of ourselves more than of him.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: The Masters and the Path (1925), Ch.4

Light , Help , Thinking , Appearance

“It is a religion in so far as, having shown us the course of ordinary evolution, it also puts before us and advises a method of shortening that course, so that by conscious effort we may progress more directly towards the goal.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

A Textbook of Theosophy (1912), Chapter One

Religion , Effort

“I am not writing for those who do not believe that there is such a thing as clairvoyance, nor am I seeking to convince those who are in doubt about the matter… I am addressing myself to the better-instructed class who know that clairvoyance exists, and are sufficiently interested in the subject to be glad of information as to its methods and possibilities; and I would assure them that what I write is the result of much careful study and experiment.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater book Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance (1903), Chapter One

Study

“People in the present day will be slow to believe that any knowledge worth considering can be found outside the bright focus of Western culture. Modern science has accomplished grand results by the open method of investigation, and is very impatient of the theory that persons who ever attained to real knowledge, either in sciences or metaphysics, could have been content to hide their light under a bushel. So the tendency has been to conceive that occult philosophers of old- Egyptian priests, Chaldean Magi, Essenes, Gnostics, theurgic Neo-Platonists, and the rest-who kept their knowledge secret, must have adopted that policy to conceal the fact that they knew very little. Mystery can only have been loved by charlatans who wished to mystify. The conclusion is pardonable from the modern point of view, but it has given rise to an impression in the popular mind that the ancient mystics have actually been turned inside out, and found to know very little. This impression is absolutely erroneous.”

Alfred Percy Sinnett book The Occult World

Introduction
The Occult World

Making love , Light , Personality , People

“Evolutionary progress is based on the process of rebirth; reincarnation is the method of our evolution of consciousness…The effects from our previous deeds, good and bad, create the conditions of our life today, and the results of our deeds today create the conditions of the next period of life, either now or when we return in our next body.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Ageless Wisdom, An Introduction to Humanity's Spiritual Legacy (1996)

Bad luck , Life

“You and I are One — Whoever, whatever, wherever you are, tread the divine water of cleanliness which is detachment. I have not come to teach you anything new. Be honest to yourself, sincere to yourself, and be detached. This method is so simple, so sweet, it is free from religions, ideologies, politics. It makes one experience who one is. Fulfill your role, yet be free.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Teachings - The Laws of Life (2005)

Water , Religion , Sincerity , Making love

“There is no doubt that the contrast is patent between what we call, with too gross a classification, the developed and the undeveloped countries. … Why is there this difference, this divergence, this bifurcation? … it is not due to any difference in intellectual capacity, human ability or insight. It is an absurd notion that the European is intellectually superior to vast millions of the human race in Asia and elsewhere. The subtlety, the insight, the power of reflection and of argument to be found in India and elsewhere are equal to anything which is within our conception or grasp. As for character and human ability, it would be ludicrous, and a confession of total and boorish ignorance, to say that it is difference in those respects which accounts for these differences of experience. In case I be misunderstood, may I say at once that I do not believe that the IQ method of analysing the human race produces useful results for this purpose. I doubt whether many of the characteristics which we regard as typically and transcendentally European are purely intellectual. I think they have in them very much of the moral and very much of the social.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1980/jun/16/international-development-brandt-report#S5CV0986P0_19800616_HOC_323 in the House of Commons (16 June 1980) on the Brandt Report
1980s

Thinking , Country

“There are some who question the relevance of space activities in a developing nation. To us, there is no ambiguity of purpose. We do not have the fantasy of competing with the economically advanced nations in the exploration of the Moon or the planets or manned space-flight. But we are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the community of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society, which we find in our country. And we should note that the application of sophisticated technologies and methods of analysis to our problems is not to be confused with embarking on grandiose schemes, whose primary impact is for show rather than for progress measured in hard economic and social terms.”

Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) (1919-1971), Indian physicist

Quoted in "List Of Important Speeches And Papers By Dr. Vikram A. Sarabhai"
Source: [List Of Important Speeches And Papers By Dr. Vikram A. Sarabhai., https://www.prl.res.in/~library/sarabhai_v_speeches.pdf, PRL.res.in, 27 June 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20190627181445/https://www.prl.res.in/~library/sarabhai_v_speeches.pdf, 27 June 2019, 113]

Problem , Question , Country , Communication

“By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss-waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

In a letter to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. [Hiney, Tom, Frank MacShane, 2000, The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959, New York, Atlantic Monthly Press, p. 77, ISBN 0871137860]

Way , Perfection , God , Reading

“The killing of infidels by any method including martyrdom (suicide) operations has been sanctified by many scholars even if it means killing innocent Muslims…The shedding of Muslim blood…is allowed in order to avoid the greater evil of disrupting jihad.”

Abu Musab Zarqawi (1966–2006) Jordanian jihadist

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in quotes https://www.irishtimes.com/news/abu-musab-al-zarqawi-in-quotes-1.786124 The Irish Times (18th May 2005)

Suicide , Evil

“Acts of sabotage are very important. It is necessary to distinguish clearly between sabotage, a revolutionary and highly effective method of warfare, and terrorism, a measure that is generally ineffective and in-discriminate in its results, since it often makes victims of innocent people and destroys a large number of lives that would be valuable to the revolution. Terrorism should be considered a valuable tactic when it is used to put to death some noted leader of the oppressing forces well known for his cruelty, his efficiency in repression, or other quality that makes his elimination useful. But the killing of persons of small importance is never advisable, since it brings on an increase of reprisals, including deaths.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. I: 3. Guerrilla Tactics

Personality , Death , People , Making love

“I have already accepted the policy of Imperial preference…to the effect that a preference will be given on existing duties and on any duties which may subsequently be imposed. On this subject I think there is no difference of opinion between us. … I am prepared to say that the key industries on which the life of the nation depends must be preserved. I am prepared to say also that, in order to keep up the present standard of production and develop it to the utmost extent possible, it is necessary that security should be give against the unfair competition to which our industries have been in the past subjected by the dumping of goods below the actual cost of production. … I shall look at every problem simply from the point of view of what is the best method of securing the objects at which we are aiming without any regard to theoretical opinions about Free Trade or Tariff Reform.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Andrew Bonar Law (2 November 1918), quoted in The Times (18 November 1918), p. 4
Prime Minister

Dependency , Past , Problem , Thinking

“Fascism is anti-Marxism which seeks to destroy the enemy by the evolvement of a radically opposed and yet related ideology and by the use of almost identical and yet typically modified methods, always, however within the unyielding framework of national self-assertion and autonomy. This definition implies that without Marxism there is no fascism, that fascism is at the same time closer to and further from communism than is liberal anti-communism, that it necessarily shows at least an inclination toward a radical ideology, that fascism should never be said to exist in the absence of at least the rudiments of an organization and propaganda comparable to those of Marxism.”

Ernst Nolte (1923–2016) German historian and philosopher

Source: Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism (1965), pp. 20–21

Self-confidence , Time , Relation ships , Communication

“The anti‐Semite understands nothing about modern society. He would be incapable of conceiving of a constructive plan; his action cannot reach the level of the methodical; it remains on the ground of passion. To a long‐term enterprise he prefers an explosion of rage analogous to the running amuck of the Malays. His intellectual activity is confined to interpretation; he seeks in historical events the signs of the presence of an evil power. Out of this spring those childish and elaborate fabrications which give him his resemblance to the extreme paranoiacs. In addition, anti‐Semitism channels evolutionary drives toward the destruction of certain men, not of institutions. An anti‐Semitic mob will consider it has done enough when it has massacred some Jews and burned a few synagogues. It represents, therefore, a safety valve for the owning classes, who encourage it and thus substitute for a dangerous hate against their regime a beneficent hate against particular people. Above all this naive dualism is eminently reassuring to he anti‐Semite himself. If all he has to do is to remove Evil, that means that the Good is already given.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Anti-Semite and Jew

He has no need to seek it in anguish, to invent it, to scrutinize it patiently when he has found it, to prove it in action, to verify it by its consequences, or, finally, to shoulder he responsibilities of the moral choice be has made. It is not by chance that the great outbursts of anti‐Semitic rage conceal a basic optimism. The anti‐Semite as cast his lot for Evil so as not to have to cast his lot for Good. The more one is absorbed in fighting Evil, the less one is tempted to place the Good in question. One does not need to talk about it, yet it is always understood in the discourse of the anti‐Semite and it remains understood in his thought. When he has fulfilled his mission as holy destroyer, the Lost Paradise will reconstitute itself. For the moment so many tasks confront the anti‐Semite that he does not have time to think about it. He is in the breach, fighting, and each of his outbursts of rage is a pretext to avoid the anguished search for the Good.
Pages 31-32
Anti-Semite and Jew (1945)

Hate , Understanding , People , Spring

“The shortcoming thus acknowledged to attach to the content turns out at the same time to be a shortcoming in respect of form. Spinoza puts substance at the head of his system, and defines it to be the unity of thought and extension, without demonstrating how he gets to this distinction, or how he traces it back to the unity of substance. The further treatment of the subject proceeds in what is called the mathematical method. Definitions and axioms are first laid down: after them comes a series of theorems, which are proved by an analytical reduction of them to these unproved postulates. Although the system of Spinoza, and that even by those who altogether reject its contents and results, is praised for the strict sequence of its method, such unqualified praise of the form is as little justified as an unqualified rejection of the content. The defect of the content is that the form is not known as immanent in it, and therefore only approaches it as an outer and subjective form. As intuitively accepted by Spinoza without a previous mediation by dialectic, Substance, as the universal negative power, is as it were a dark shapeless abyss which engulfs all definite content as radically null, and produces from itself nothing that has a positive subsistence of its own.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences: The Logic
G - L, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Universe , Time , Mathematics

“The philosophy of a purely theoretical thinker, who contemplates all things from the point of view of things in themselves, belongs in the same class as the attempt to apply abstract thought to the entire field of consciousness without meeting any byways or stops. Look at Baruch Spinoza, that true hero of thought, who studied in his own person the way in which the emotions and passions, as expressions of his internal mechanism, transform themselves for him into objects of geometrical analysis! In the meantime, until the heroism of Baruch Spinoza shall become the matter-of-fact virtue of everyday life in the higher developed humanity of the future, and until myths, poetry, metaphysics and religion shall no longer overshadow the field of consciousness, let us be content that up to now, and for the present, philosophy in its differentiated and its improved sense has served, and serves, as a critical instrument and helps science to keep its formal methods and logical processes clear; that it helps us in our lives to reduce the obstacles, which the fantastic projections of the emotions, passions, fears and hopes pile in the way of free thought; that it helps and serves, as Spinoza himself would say, to vanquish imaginationem et ignorantiam.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Antonio Labriola, Socialism and Philosophy (1897) [original in Italian]
G - L

Fear , Study , Religion , Personality

“Could he use the same excuse as the Confed—the end justified the means? Sometimes it did, of course, but could one ethically justify using the same methods as a deplored enemy, in order to get it to stop?”

Steve Perry book The Man Who Never Missed

Source: The Man Who Never Missed (1985), Chapter 15 (p. 132)

“Inside the family room, Arthur Herk was methodically, relentlessly changing channels. He was doing this partly because the instinct to change channels is embedded deep in the male genetic code, and partly because he knew his wife and stepdaughter hated it.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Novels, Big Trouble (1999), Chapter 2

Family , Hate , Change

“This method of mental training is, therefore, the immediate preparation for the moral; it completely destroys the root of immorality by never allowing sensuous enjoyment to become the motive. Formerly, that was the first motive to be stimulated and developed, because it was believed that otherwise the pupil could not be influenced or controlled at all.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book Address to the German Nation

General Nature of New Eduction contiunued p. 31
Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche Nation) 1808, Third Address

Motivation , Training

“The Scientific discourse extracts truths from the errors which surround and oppose it on all sides and in every form; and, by demolition of these opposing views as error, and as impossible to true thought, shows the truth as that which alone remains after their withdrawal, and therefore as the only possible truth: and in this separation of opposites, and elucidation of the truth from the confused chaos in which truth and error lie mingled together, consists the peculiar and characteristic nature of the Scientific discourse. This method creates and produces truth, before our eyes, out of a world full of error.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Way Towards The Blessed Life or the Doctrine of Religion 1806, P. 26-27

Nature , Truth , Lie , World

“You will see…many very important differences between our methods of education and yours, but the main difference is that nowadays all persons equally have those opportunities of higher education which in your day only an infinitesimal portion of the population enjoyed. We should think we had gained nothing worth speaking of, in equalizing the physical comfort of men, without this educational equality….”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25439 (1888), Ch. 21.

Education , Thinking , Personality , Men

“Eratosthenes of Cyrene, employing mathematical theories and geometrical methods, discovered from the course of the sun the shadows cast by an equinoctial gnomon, and the inclination of the heaven that the circumference of the earth is two hundred and fifty-two thousand stadia, that is, thirty-one million five hundred thousand paces.”

Eratosthenes (-276–-194 BC) ancient Greek scientist

Vitruvius, De Architectura, Book 1, Chap 6, Sec. 9; as translated in Morris Hicky Morgan (trans.), Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture (1914), 27-28.
About

Sun , Mathematics

“The Methods of Industrial Management.”

Hugo Diemer (1870–1937) American mechanical engineer

A committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers made an extensive canvass in the fall of 1912 to determine what were the new elements in modern management as well as what the committee designated as the regulative principles of industrial management. The committee confirmed Adam Smith's statement made in 1776 in his Wealth of Nations, in which he held that the application of the principle of division of labor was the basis of manufacture. The committee also agreed with Charles Babbage, who in his work entitled Economy of Machinery and Manufacture written in 1832, added another principle, namely the transference of skill.
1921, p. 10
Factory organization and administration, 1910

“The easy problems of consciousness are those that seem directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. The hard problems are those that seem to resist those methods. …The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience.”

David Chalmers (1966) Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist

When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. ...When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought.
"Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness," 1995

Problem , Science

“THE subject I have been given for these lectures is The Psychological Foundations of Business Administration, but as it is obvious that we cannot in four papers consider all the contributions which contemporary psychology is making to business administration — to the methods of hiring, promoting and discharging, to the consideration of incentives, the relation of output to motive, to group organization, etc.”

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) American academic

I have chosen certain subjects which seem to me to go to the heart of personnel relations in industry. I wish to consider in this paper the most fruitful way of dealing with conflict. At the outset I should like to ask you to agree for the moment to think of conflict as neither good nor bad; to consider it without ethical prejudgment; to think of it not as warfare, but as the appearance of difference, difference of opinions, of interests. For that is what conflict means — difference. We shall not consider merely the differences between employer and employee, but those between managers, between the directors at the Board meetings, or wherever difference appears.
Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. 1. Lead paragraph

Motivation , Business , Making love , Relation ships

“This method of mine takes its beginnings where Cavalieri ends his Method of indivisibles.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

...for as his was the Geometry of indivisibles, so I have chosen to call my method the Arithmetic of infinitesimals.
Arithmetica Infinitorum (1656)

“Starting his career as a Trade Unionist when Trade Unionism was not prominent of public life, he came to occupy the highest office of this country, with dignity and charm. It was a day of Victory for the labour and Weaker Sections of the Society, when he became the President of India winning a political battle with popular support. He was a fearless champion of the cause of the poor and the working classes. He was always insisting upon cleaner methods in public life. As a labour leader he did not allow Trade Unions to be involved in political activities. He was a stalwart of Indian Nationalism.”

V. V. Giri (1894–1980) Indian politician and 4th president of India

Source: Presidents of India, 1950-2003, p. 84

Support , Life , Victory , Country

“An important distinction exists between prospective and retrospective methods of calculating economic quantities such as incomes, savings, and investments; and… a corresponding distinction of great theoretical importance must be drawn between two alternative methods of defining these quantities. Quantities defined in terms of measurements made at the end of the period in question are referred to as ex post; quantities defined in terms of action planned at the beginning of the period in question are referred to as ex ante.”

Gunnar Myrdal (1898–1987) Swedish economist

Source: Monetary Equilibrium (1939), p. 34

Question

“Braid passionately emphasised the scientific approach to hypnotherapy. He based his own method upon well-established or common sense principles such as the effect of expectation and vivid imagination, the role of social imitation, and the power of focused attention to increase the effect of certain dominant ideas. These are also emphasised in the modern cognitive-behavioural theory of hypnosis. Braid’s down-to-earth approach therefore provides an ideal foundation for modern scientific study of hypnosis and practical hypnotherapy.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

Donald Robertson, in "The Discovery of Hypnosis: The Collected Writings of James Braid" quoted in “The Original Philosophy of Hypnotism”.

Study , Imagination , Sense , Passion

“According to Sir Anthony Fitzherbert it was the custom in England to shear wheat and rye and to leave the straw standing after the third method described by Varro, the purpose being to preserve the straw to be cut later for thatching, as threshing It would necessarily destroy its value for thatching. It was the custom in England, however, to mow barley and oats.”

Anthony Fitzherbert (1470–1538) English judge, scholar and legal author

A Virginia farmer (translator) (1913) in Varro's Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres https://archive.org/stream/cu31924062805209#page/n181/mode/2up/search/husbandry, p. 161-2.

“The Congress movement was for a long time purely occidental in its mind, character and methods, confined to the English-educated few, founded on the political rights and interests of the people read in the light of English history and European ideals, but with no roots either in the past of the country or in the inner spirit of the nation…. To bring in the mass of the people, to found the greatness of the future on the greatness of the past, to infuse Indian politics with Indian religious fervour and spirituality are the indispensable conditions for a great and powerful political awakening in India. Others, writers, thinkers, spiritual leaders, had seen this truth. Mr. Tilak was the first to bring it into the actual field of practical politics….. There are always two classes of political mind: one is preoccupied with details for their own sake, revels in the petty points of the moment and puts away into the background the great principles and the great necessities, the other sees rather these first and always and details only in relation to them. The one type moves in a routine circle which may or may not have an issue; it cannot see the forest for the trees and it is only by an accident that it stumbles, if at all, on the way out. The other type takes a mountain-top view of the goal and all the directions and keeps that in its mental compass through all the deflections, retardations and tortuosities which the character of the intervening country may compel it to accept; but these it abridges as much as possible. The former class arrogate the name of statesman in their own day; it is to the latter that posterity concedes it and sees in them the true leaders of great movements. Mr. Tilak, like all men of pre-eminent political genius, belongs to this second and greater order of mind.”

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) Indian independence activist

Sri Aurobindo, (From an introduction to a book entitled Speeches and Writings of Tilak.), quoted from Sri Aurobindo, ., Nahar, S., Aurobindo, ., & Institut de recherches évolutives (Paris). India's rebirth: A selection from Sri Aurobindo's writing, talks and speeches. Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives. 3rd Edition (2000). https://web.archive.org/web/20170826004028/http://bharatvani.org/books/ir/IR_frontpage.htm

Tree , Time , History , Reading

“The Generic Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology is about those methods, models and tools which are needed to build the integrated enterprise. The architecture is generic because it applies to most, potentially all types of enterprise. The coverage of the framework spans Products, Enterprises, Enterprise Integration and Strategic Enterprise Management, with the emphasis being on the middle two. The proposal for the architecture follows the architecture itself improving the quality of the presentation and of the outcome. De nitions of Generic Enterprise Reference Architecture, Enterprise Engineering/ Integration Methodology, Enterprise Modelling Languages, Enterprise Models, and Enterprise Modules are given. It is proposed how the above could be developed on the basis of previously analysed architectures (and other results too), such as the Purdue Enterprise Reference Architecture, the GRAI Integrated Methodology, CIM-OSA, and TOVIE.”

Peter Bernus (1949) Hungarian-Australian computer scientist

Peter Bernus and Laszlo Nemes (1996) "A framework to define a generic enterprise reference architecture and methodology." Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems Vol 9 (3) p. 179

“Besides these improvements,… there are others,… which may… be interesting to those… engaged in those departments… Among these may be ranked, in the division of mechanics, properly so called, a simple demonstration of the law of the force by which a body revolves in an ellipsis; another of the properties of cycloidal pendulums; an examination of the mechanism of animal motions; a comparison of the measures and weights of different countries; and a convenient estimate of the effect of human labour: with respect to architecture, a simple method of drawing the outline of a column: an investigation of the best forms for arches; a determination of the curve which affords the greatest space for turning; considerations on the structure of the joints employed in carpentry, and on the firmness of wedges; and an easy mode of forming a kirb roof: for the purposes of machinery of different kinds, an arrangement of bars for obtaining rectilinear motion; an inquiry into the most eligible proportions of wheels and pinions; remarks on the friction of wheel work, and of balances; a mode of finding the form of a tooth for impelling a pallet without friction; a chronometer for measuring minute portions of time; a clock escapement; a calculation of the effect of temperature on steel springs; an easy determination of the best line of draught for a carriage; an investigation of the resistance to be overcome by a wheel or roller; and an estimation of the ultimate pressure produced by a blow.”

Thomas Young (scientist) (1773–1829) English polymath

Preface
A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts (1807)

Drawing , Time , Law , Country

“The danger, I suppose, of using pseudonyms is that it interferes with that desirable process—the unification of the personality. Goethe said that even the writing of plays, dividing the imagination up among different fictional personalities, damaged what he valued — the mind’s wholeness. I wonder what he meant exactly, since he also described his mode of thinking as imagined conversations with various people. Maybe the pseudonyms, like other personalities conjured up in a dramatic work, can be a preliminary stage of identifying and exploring new parts of yourself. Then the next stage would be to incorporate them in the unifying process. Accept responsibility for them. Maybe that’s what Yeats meant by seeking his opposite. The great Sufi master Ibn el-Arabi described the essential method of spiritual advancement as an inner conversation with the personalities that seem to exist beyond what you regard as your own limits... getting those personalities to tell you what you did not know, or what you could not easily conceive of within your habitual limits. This is commonplace in some therapies, of course.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

The Paris Review interview

Imagination , Personality , People , Thinking

“He is at pains to avoid making enemies. He is slow, but very methodical. He displays marked tactical ability, though he is inclined to spend overmuch time on his appreciation.”

Friedrich Paulus (1890–1957) German general

Report about Friedrich Paulus by German Army soldier in 1927

Pain , Time , Making love

“Yet we are obliged, to regard a man with so little about him that is ornamental or entertaining, or attractive, as a very considerable personage in the history of his country. Belonging to an age of gigantic intellect and gigantic attainments, he was admired by his contemporaries, and time has in no degree impaired his fame. He is most familiar to us as an author. Smart legal practitioners, who are only desirous of making money by their profession, neglect his works, and sneer at them as pedantic and antiquated; but they continue to be studied by all who wish to know the history and to acquire a scientific and liberal knowledge of our judicial and political institutions. His Opus Magnum is this Commentary upon Littleton, which in itself may be said to contain the whole common law of England as it then existed. Notwithstanding its want of method and its quaintness, the author writes from such a full mind, with such mastery over his subject, and with such unbroken spirit, that every law student who has made, or is ever likely to make, any proficiency, must peruse him with delight.”

Edward Coke (1552–1634) English lawyer and judge

Lord Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices, Vol. 1, 338.
About, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904)

Money , Study , Time , History

“Convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i. e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand. This is so not because such confessions are unlikely to be true but because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law: that ours is an accusatorial and not an inquisitorial system — a system in which the State must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured and may not by coercion prove its charges against an accused out of his own mouth.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534, 540-41 (1961).
Judicial opinions

Law

“There are souls that are incurable and lost to the rest of society. Deprive them of one means of folly, they will invent ten thousand others. They will create subtler, wilder methods, methods that are absolutely desperate.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Nature herself is fundamentally antisocial, it is only by a usurpation of powers that the organized body of society opposes the natural inclination of humanity.
General Security: The Liquidation of Opium (1925)

Soul

“We must call attention, among the workers parties or the extremist tendencies within those parties, to the need to undertake an effective ideological action in order to combat the emotional influence of advanced capitalist methods of propaganda. On every occasion, by every hyper-political means, we must publicize desirable alternatives to the spectacle of the capitalist way of life, so as to destroy the bourgeois idea of happiness. At the same time, taking into account the existence, within the various ruling classes, of elements that have always tended (out of boredom and thirst for novelty) toward things that lead to the disappearance of their societies, we should incite the persons who control some of the vast resources that we lack to provide us with the means to carry out our experiments, out of the same motives of potential profit as they do with scientific research.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

Our Immediate Tasks
Report on the Construction of Situations (1957)

Time , Personality , Motivation , Way

“The Keynesian Revolution was, in the form in which it succeeded in the United States, a revolution in method.”

Robert Lucas Jr. (1937) American economist

This was not Keynes’s intent, nor is it the view of all of his most eminent followers. Yet if one does not view the revolution in this way, it is impossible to account for some of its most important features.
"After Keynesian macroeconomics" 1978

“A great many individuals ever since the rise of the mathematical method, have, each for himself, attacked its direct and indirect consequences. …I shall call each of these persons a paradoxer, and his system a paradox.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

I use the word in the old sense: ...something which is apart from general opinion, either in subject-matter, method, or conclusion. ...Thus in the sixteenth century many spoke of the earth's motion as the paradox of Copernicus, who held the ingenuity of that theory in very high esteem, and some, I think, who even inclined towards it. In the seventeenth century, the depravation of meaning took place... Phillips says paradox is "a thing which seemeth strange"—here is the old meaning...—"and absurd, and is contrary to common opinion," which is an addition due to his own time.
A Budget of Paradoxes (1872)

Personality , Mathematics

“We are… bound to attach the greatest importance to the preliminary step taken by Lavoisier, who is even more justly called the father of modern chemistry than Kepler is called the father of modern astronomy. The exact claims of Lavoisier to this important place in the history of chemistry have been variously stated: …since his time, and greatly through his labours, the quantitative method has been established as the ultimate test of chemical facts; the principle of this method being the rule that in all changes of combination and reaction, the total weight of the various ingredients—be they elementary bodies or compounds—remains unchanged. The science of chemistry was thus established upon an exact, a mathematical basis. By means of this method Lavoisier, utilising and analysing the results gained by himself and others before him, notably those of Priestley, Cavendish, and Black, succeeded in destroying the older theory of combustion, the so-called phlogistic theory.”

Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) French chemist

John Theodore Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century Vol.1 http://books.google.com/books?id=xqwQAAAAYAAJ (1903)

Time , History , Mathematics , Science

“This is not a new idea; this is the idea of the age of reason. This is the philosophy that guided the men who made the democracy that we live under. The idea that no one really knew how to run a government led to the idea that we should arrange a system by which new ideas could be developed, tried out, and tossed out if necessary, with more new ideas brought in — a trial and error system. This method was a result of the fact that science was already showing itself to be a successful venture at the end of the eighteenth century. Even then it was clear to socially minded people that the openness of possibilities was an opportunity, and that doubt and discussion were essential to progress into the unknown. If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

The Value of Science (1955)

Democracy , Success , People , Problem

“By what method or methods can the able men from every rank of life be gathered, as diamond-grains from the general mass of sand: the able men, not the sham-able;—and set to do the work of governing, contriving, administering and guiding for us!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

It is the question of questions. All that Democracy ever meant lies there: the attainment of a truer and truer Aristocracy, or Government again by the Best.
1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Downing Street (April 1, 1850)

Life , Men

“The Thibet priests have methods of their own of discovering what Man is Greatest, fit to be supreme over them. Bad methods: but are they so much worse than our methods,—of understanding him to be always the eldest-born of a certain genealogy? Alas, it is a difficult thing to find good methods for!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Bad luck , Understanding

“All types of conniving methods are still being used to keep Negroes from becoming registered voters. Complex literacy tests are often given, with questions that a Ph. D. in any field or a person with a law degree from any great law university in the world could not answer to the even more difficult question of, how many bubbles do you find on a bar of soap? They tell me that occasionally they will ask that question in Mississippi and Alabama. And there are still millions of Negroes who are not registered to vote because of these methods being used.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Law , Question , Personality , Universe

“It was in 1929 that Salvador Dali [Dali is writing about himself] brought his attention to hear upon the internal mechanism of paranoiac phenomena and envisaged the possibility of an experimental method based on the sudden power of the systematic associations proper to paranoia; this method afterwards became the delirio-critical synthesis which hears the name of "paranoiac-critical activity."”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Paranoia: delirium of interpretive association bearing a systematic structure. Paranoiac-critical activity: spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based upon the interpretive-critical association of delirious phenomena.
Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1931 - 1940, My Pictorial Struggle', S. Dali, 1935, Chapter: 'My Pictorial Struggle', p. 15

“Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Le Discours de la Méthode (1637)

Truth , Science

“To simplify somewhat, one may say that anthropology primarily offers two kinds of insight. First, its practitioners produce knowledge about the actual cultural variation in the world; studies may deal with, say, the role of caste and wealth in Indian village life, technology among highland people in New Guinea, religion in southern Africa, life on the Wall Street stock exchange, the political importance of kinship in the Middle East, or concepts about life and the cosmos in the Amazon basin. Although most anthropologists are specialists in one or two regions, it is necessary to be knowledgeable about global cultural variation, and about humanity as such, in order to be able to say anything interesting about one’s region, topic or people.
Second, anthropology offers methods and theoretical perspectives enabling the practitioner to explore, compare and understand these varied expressions of the human condition. In other words, the subject offers both things to think about and things to think with.
But anthropology is not just a toolbox; it is also a craft which teaches the novice how to obtain a certain kind of knowledge and what this knowledge might say something about.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 1 : Why Anthropology?

Study , Religion , Understanding , Wealth

“[O]ur purpose is to give a presentation of geometry... in its visual, intuitive aspects. With the aid of visual imagination we can illuminate the manifold facts and problems... beyond this, it is possible... to depict the geometric outline of the methods of investigation and proof, without... entering into the details... In this manner, geometry being as many-faceted as it is and being related to the most diverse branches of mathematics, we may even obtain a summarizing survey of mathematics as a whole, and a valid idea of the variety of problems and the wealth of ideas it contains. Thus a presentation of geometry in large brushstrokes... and based on the approach through visual intuition, should contribute to a more just appreciation of mathematics by a wider range of people than just the specialists.”

David Hilbert Geometry and the Imagination

Preface
Geometry and the Imagination (1952)

Imagination , Wealth , People , Problem

“The purpose here is to demonstrate the diversity of classical formulae which appeared in architectural design, and if we look at classical architecture as a repertoire of forms rather than statements of specific design credos we can challenge teleological constructions of stylistic histories. The method of grouping the architecture from given periods of time under general stylistic labels has, without doubt, been the backbone of the discipline of architectural history. And when used skilfully and carefully it can provide useful punctuation marks in the lengthy and complex narrative that is the subject-matter of the history of western building. Yet it is only one of many tools with which to explore social and cultural contexts.”

Dana Arnold (1961) Middlessex uni prof

Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 3 : On classical ground : Histories of style

Appearance , History , Time

“[B]iography is an essential part of human memory. We think about ourselves in terms of what we have done – our identity is constructed around our past. Are history and biography linked or just two parallel strands? Biographers and historians make choices about how to frame their subject, they draw together fragments to present a possible glimpse of the unattainable whole. An historian might have a thesis or method which drives his/her enquiry whereas a biographer has, perhaps, a particular view of an individual they wish to present. Neither presents the truth, only an interpretation.”

Dana Arnold (1961) Middlessex uni prof

Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 2 : The authority of the author : Biography and the reconstruction of the canon

Drawing , History , Past , Truth

“In the esoteric tradition, the Christ is not the name of an individual but of an Office in the [esoteric spiritual] Hierarchy. The present holder of that Office, the Lord Maitreya, has held it for 2,600 years, and manifested in Palestine through His disciple, Jesus, by the occult method of overshadowing, the most frequent form used for the manifestation of Avatars.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1980)

Christ

“We have developed an effective treatment plan (to patients contracting COVID-19) based on our experience of dealing with SARS, by employing various life support methods to (achieve) a higher rate of recovery.”

Zhong Nanshan (1936) Chinese pulmonologist

Zhong Nanshan (2020) cited in " China starts clinical trials for new antiviral drug to treat coronavirus https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3048732/china-starts-clinical-trials-new-antiviral-drug-treat" on South China Morning Post, 3 February 2020.

Support , Life

“The world will accept you changing your style for them, but pretty soon they’re going to demand that you change your substance. They’re going to demand that you – well, they liked the fact that you’ve taken their method, but they’re going to demand you change your message.”

John F. MacArthur (1939) American pastor and author

Ashamed of the Gospel: When the Church Becomes Like the World (1993)
1990s

World , Change

“Under all circumstances we shall remain the champions of democracy and humanity. We reject as senseless and cruel and ruinous to both our cause and our nation the suggestion that we strive to arrive at humanity by the method of brutality.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

Chap. V, The Period of Dictatorship
"Hitlerism and Social Democracy" (1934) https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1934/hitler/index.htm

Democracy

“The choice of methods and weapons to be used by the champions of democracy will not depend upon our wishes but will be determined by political and social conditions. and especially by the methods and weapons of the enemy.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

Chap. V, The Period of Dictatorship
"Hitlerism and Social Democracy" (1934) https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1934/hitler/index.htm

Democracy , Dependency

“We can never know whether our analysis and our methods are wrong, except sometimes with hindsight. Our movements are stronger when they employ diverse methods and analyses and these different positions criticize one another.”

Peter Gelderloos (1982) American anarchist

Introduction: Nonviolence has lost the debate
"The Failure of Nonviolence" (2013) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-the-failure-of-nonviolence

“I had a teacher who used to reflect back my questions that way. I thought it was the Socratic method, and it impressed me immensely, until I found out he used it whenever he didn’t know the answer.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 4 (p. 60)

Way , Teachers , Question

“The Fear of Death often proves Mortal, and sets People on Methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 25 (29 March 1711)
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Fear , Death , People

“The English race, consequently, has long and successfully studied the art of curbing executive power to the constant neglect of the art of perfecting executive methods. It has exercised itself much more in controlling than in energizing government, It has been more concerned to render government just and moderate than to make it facile, well-ordered,and effective.”

Woodrow Wilson The Study of Administration

Source: 1880s, "The Study of Administration," 1887, p. 206;

Study , Art , Perfection , Making love

“You talk of Paine with more respect than he deserves: He is utterly incapable of comprehending his subject. He has not even a moderate portion of learning of any kind. He has learnd the instrumental part of literature, a style, and a method of disposing his ideas, without having ever made a previous preparation of Study or thinking—for the use of it. ... [Paine] possesses nothing more than what a man whose audacity makes him careless of logical consequences, and his total want of honour and morality makes indifferent as to political consequences, may very easily write. They indeed who seriously write upon a principle of levelling ought to be answerd by the Magistrate—and not by the Speculatist.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to William Cusac Smith (22 July 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), pp. 303-304
1790s

Pain , Study , Indifference , Learning

“Denying miracles, the Teacher pointed out the concealed powers of human nature which, when developed, can produce the so-called miracles.
The method of developing these powers is interpreted in Buddhist books and is known under the name of the science “Iddhi-Vidhanana,” which points out two forms of manifestation of these powers and two ways to attain them. One, the lower, is reached by way of various ascetic and other physical practices; the other higher one, embracing all possible manifestations, is attained by the power of inner development. The first method of developing these powers is not lasting and may be lost, whereas inner development can never be lost. Its mastery is attained by following the noble way indicated by Buddha. All these hidden powers gradually unfold in man, usually of themselves, in proportion to man’s mastery of the lower expressions of his nature in a whole series of previous lives.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

Source: Foundations of Buddhism (1930)

Nature , Teachers , Books , Way

“The Liberal is distinguished from the Conservative and the Radical, not only by his basic philosophy but by his methods. Never does he believe that a good end justifies and evil means. He seeks to find everything that binds men together, rather than what divides them, for he loves persuasion and detests coercion.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 90

Love , Making love , Evil , Men

“Dharma means duty, or obligation, and it is your definite and specific obligation to develop the intuition. The means or methods whereby this development is to be brought about, can be by the study of symbols.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: Glamour: A World Problem (1950), Certain Preliminary Clarifications

Study

“The reality is that racial lynchings were a frequent and normal feature of life in the South. This unique method of murder was a devastating form of terrorism that imposed a constant threat to all black people. The white authority structure did not only tolerate or encourage these killings but used the fear of lynchings to control and oppress black people.”

Guy P. Harrison (1963) American skeptic author

Fear , Life , Reality , People

“The task of unveiling the hidden truth demands some knowledge of Cosmogenesis, of the emanation of the Universe from the Absolute, the finite from the Infinite, and of the successive cycles, major and minor, of involution and evolution. In addition, both knowledge of the Symbolical Language, its purposes, methods and classical symbols, and the faculty of analysing and interpreting historical metaphors, are necessary to open the casket containing the treasures of concealed wisdom—the Holy Bible itself.”

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

Source: The Hidden Wisdom In The Holy Bible (1963)

Success , Knowledge , Truth , Universe

“Mix together saltpetre, luru vopo vir con utriet [powdered charcoal], and sulphur, and you will make thunder and lightning, if you know the method of mixing them.”

Roger Bacon (1220–1292) medieval philosopher and theologian

Source: De Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae et de Nullitate Magise, Ch. 11, in a reference to Bacon's knowledge of making gunpowder, as quoted by Thomas Thomson, The History of Chemistry (1830) Vol. 1, p. 36.

Making love

“The method of establishing perfect spiritual relationship with God that the Holy Quran teaches us is Islam, meaning devoting one's whole life to the cause of God and being occupied with the supplications which we have been taught in Surah Fatiha. This is the essence of Islam. Complete surrender to God and the supplication taught in Surah Fatihah are the only methods of meeting God and drinking the water of true salvation.”

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad book The Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam

The Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam.
The Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam
Source: The Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam https://www.alislam.org/book/philosophy-teachings-islam/ – Alislam https://www.alislam.org/

God , Drink , Perfection , Water

“Orthodox Buddhism strictly forbids religious rites, and the learned lamas acknowledge that they cannot bestow spiritual enlightenment, which can only be acquired by personal intellectual effort. Yet the majority believe in the efficacy of certain ritualistic methods of the healing of the sick, securing material prosperity, the conquest of evil beings and the guidance of the spirits of the dead in the other world.”

Alexandra David-Néel (1868–1969) French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist, anarchist and writer

Magic And Mystery In Tibet

Dead , Personality , Learning , World

“There is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than in philosophical debates to endeavour to refute any hypothesis by a pretext of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads us into absurdities, 'tis certainly false; but 'tis not certain an opinion is false, because 'tis of dangerous consequence.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 3, Section 2
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 2: Of the passions

Falseness , Religion

Quotes about method page 18

Quotes about method
page 18