Quotes about method
page 7

“Now, what is the policy? It is, so far as we know, to interfere with the established fiscal policy of this country in order to promote the union of the Empire—that is to say, it is to affect gravely, if not to sap, the foundations of the edifice in order to promote the stability of the structure. (Laughter and cheers)…Had free trade failed us in the 57 years of experience we have had of it, had we found ourselves with a shrinking trade, a diminished revenue, a population on the verge of poverty, we should long ago have reviewed the whole system of free trade and reconsidered it. But we find ourselves, so far as all statistics can give us a clue, at a pinnacle of wealth such as no nation of the size has ever reached in the history of the world…The Empire is built up on free trade…your Empire is founded on the condition, and it could not have existed until now except on that condition, that every self-governing part of it shall have the right to work out its own prosperity by its own methods. I do not know why it should enter the heads of any statesman to deny that liberty to the United Kingdom.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Speech to the Liberal League on 12 June 1903, repudiating Chamberlain's proposals, reported in The Times (13 June 1903), p. 8.

World, History, Laughter, Parting

“Our thesis now is that the Portuguese seafarers and scientists of the 15th and 16th centuries made an important contribution to the rise of modern science by unintentionally undermining the belief in scientific authorities and by strengthening the confidence in an empirical, natural, historical method.”

Reijer Hooykaas (1906–1994) Dutch historian

"The Portuguese Discoveries and the Rise of Modern Science," 1983

Confidence, Nature, Science

“The effectiveness of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods employed, not upon the doctrines taught. These doctrines may be true or false, wholesome or pernicious—it makes little or no difference.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 7 (p. 63)

Dependency, Falseness

“Eudoxus was perhaps the greatest of all Archimedes's predecessors, and it is his achievements, especially the discovery of the method of exhaustion, which interest us in connexion with Archimedes.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

p, 125
Achimedes (1920)

“There's the Mike Wallace approach, or you can call it the Michael Moore approach, which is the adversarial approach. In the end, that is not in the service of finding out anything. It's in service of dramatizing a received view: Namely, "This guy is an asshole, and now I will illustrate how this guy is an asshole by showing his inability to answer the questions I put to him." It's not what I'm about. It's not that one approach is good and the other is bad. They just have different valences. I like confrontation as much as the next guy. I'll give you the best example I can think of for why I like my method. [During] my interview with Emily Miller, one of the wacko eyewitnesses in The Thin Blue Line, she volunteered that she had failed to pick out Randall Adams in a police lineup. It wasn't me saying to her, "Emily Miller, how come you failed to pick out Randall Adams in a police lineup?" Why? Because I didn't know she failed to do it, because part of the trial record said she had successfully picked him out. When I heard this, not in response to some adversarial question, just her telling me her story, I asked her, "How did you know you failed to pick out Randall Adams?"”

Errol Morris (1948) American filmmaker and writer

She said, "I know because the policeman sitting next to me told me I had picked out the wrong person and pointed out the right person so I wouldn't make that mistake again." Source: Pitch Weekly http://www.tipjar.com/dan/errolmorris.html

Guy, Question, Thinking, Parting

“Experienced military and intelligence professionals know that torture, in addition to being illegal and immoral, is an unreliable means of extracting information from prisoners. Much is being made of former CIA official John Kiriakou's statement that waterboarding "broke" a high-value terrorist involved in the 9/11 plot. There are always those who, whether out of fear or inexperience, rush to push the panic button instead of relying on what we know works best and most reliably in these situations. I would caution those who would rely on this example. It is far from clear that the information obtained from this prisoner through illegal means could not have been obtained through lawful methods. The FBI was getting good intelligence from this prisoner before the CIA took over. And there are numerous examples of cases where relying on information obtained through torture has disastrous consequences. The reality is that use of torture produces inconsistent results that are an unreliable basis for action and policy. The overwhelming consensus of intelligence professionals is that torture produces unreliable information. And the overwhelming consensus of senior military leaders is that resort to torture is dishonorable. Use of such primitive methods actually puts our own troops and our nation at risk.”

Harry E. Soyster (1935) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

"Former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency: Torture Produces Unreliable Information" http://web.archive.org/web/20070629145037/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/blog/torture/2007/12/former-director-of-defense-intelligence.html, Human Rights First (2007-12-11)

Fear, Law, Intelligence, Reality

“It was the French way, the method that had brought victory to the armies of the Empire, the irresistible mass. Throw the mass like a human missile at the Castle's defenders, overwhelm them with targets, terrify them with the massed drummers in the column's centre, and push over the dead to victory.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

En Masse.
French General, p. 271
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Enemy (1984)

Way, Victory, Dead

“The disconcerting fact may first be pointed out that if you write badly about good writing, however profound may be your convictions or emphatic your expression of them, your style has a tiresome trick (as a wit once pointed out) of whispering: ‘Don’t listen!’ in your readers’ ears. And it is possible also to suggest that the promulgation of new-fangled aesthetic dogmas in unwieldy sentences may be accounted for—not perhaps unspitefully—by a certain deficiency in aesthetic sensibility; as being due to a lack of that delicate, unreasoned, prompt delight in all the varied and subtle manifestations in which beauty may enchant us.
Or, if the controversy is to be carried further; and if, to place it on a more modern basis, we adopt the materialistic method of interpreting aesthetic phenomena now in fashion, may we not find reason to believe that the antagonism between journalist critics and the fine writers they disapprove of is due in its ultimate analysis to what we may designate as economic causes? Are not the authors who earn their livings by their pens, and those who, by what some regard as a social injustice, have been more or less freed from this necessity—are not these two classes of authors in a sort of natural opposition to each other? He who writes at his leisure, with the desire to master his difficult art, can hardly help envying the profits of money-making authors.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

criticizing the Cambridge School of criticism, e.g. John Middleton Murry and Herbert Read, “Fine Writing,” pp. 306-307
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

Money, Beauty, Art, Fashion

“I think what Kazan is saying is that the Method isn't a thing. It's an action, a process, a skillful or effective way of achieving a specific artistic task. It's not a pair of shoes. It's discovering how to walk. I did an affective memory at the Actors Studio years ago, after which Lee Strasberg said, "Now that's an affective memory. Darling, tell them how you did it." When I explained my process, Strasberg replied, "That's not how you do an affective memory! But that's what the Method is all about. It's a way of work!" You find your own way of carrying out your own and your character's internal truth—within your body, mind, and soul.”

Sandra Seacat (1936) American acting teacher and actress

As quoted in "The Method and the Myth" http://www.backstage.com/advice-for-actors/acting-teachers/the-method-and-the-myth/ by Robert Walden, in Backstage (April 21, 2009)

Truth, Shoe, Way, Soul

“We may also observe, that, upon these occasions, the female Nimrods dispensed with the method of riding best suited to the modesty of the sex, and sat astride on the saddle like the men; but this indecorous custom, I trust, was never general, nor of long continuance, even with the heroines who were most delighted with these masculine exercises. An author of the seventeenth century speaks of another fashion, adopted by the fair huntresses of the town of Bury in Suffolk. "The Bury ladies," says he, "that used hawking and hunting, were once in a great vaine of wearing breeches," which it seems gave rise to many severe and ludicrous sarcasms. The only argument in favour of this habit, was decency in case of an accident. But in a manner more consistent with the delicacy of the sex, that is, by refraining from those dangerous recreations.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 14
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Hunting

Men, Sex, Exercises, Fashion

“…nor have I found occasion to depart from the plan… the rejection of the whole doctrine of series in the establishment of the fundamental parts both of the Differential and Integral Calculus. The method of Lagrange… had taken deep root in elementary works; it was the sacrifice of the clear and indubitable principle of limits to a phantom, the idea that an algebra without limits was purer than one in which that notion was introduced. But, independently of the idea of limits being absolutely necessary even to the proper conception of a convergent series, it must have been obvious enough to Lagrange himself, that all application of the science to concrete magnitude, even in his own system, required the theory of limits.”

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

The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)

Idea, Science, Parting

“The characteristic method of social invention in general and of the development of negative capability in particular is to seize on deviant, subsidiary, or repressed elements in present or remembered experience and to push them toward a dominant position, all the while changing them in the course of this extension…. [T]he most successful transmutations over the long run—the ones least vulnerable to subversion by practical rivalry, moral indignation or aspiration, and by theoretical insight—are likely to be those that permit or invite further tinkering. Thus, they may be repeatedly corrected rather than entirely replaced.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: False Necessityː Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy (1987), p. 336

Change, Success

“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. 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.”

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

A Budget of Paradoxes (1872)

Mathematics, Thinking, Sense, Time

“The denial of any distinction between foreseen and intended consequences, as far as responsibility is concerned, was not made by Sidgwick in developing any one 'method of ethics'; he made this important move on behalf of everybody and just on its own account; and I think it plausible to suggest that this move on the part of Sidgwick explains the difference between old-fashioned Utilitarianism and the consequentialism, as I name it, which marks him and every English academic moral philosopher since him.”

G. E. M. Anscombe Modern Moral Philosophy

Here Anscombe coined the word "consequentialism".
Modern Moral Philosophy (1958)

Fashion, Thinking, Parting

“Let men of science keep the method of science within the limits of science; let their readers, at all events, beware to do so. Within these limits there is complete compatibility of science with religion, and forever will be.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Limits of Evolution, p.54-5

Men, Religion, Science

“There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another, This conception is a potent menace to social regeneration. All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical.”

Emma Goldman book My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

Parting

“They [the visitors in his studio, praising his work] see poetry in what I have done. No, I apply my method and that is all there is to it.”

Georges Seurat (1859–1891) French painter

as quoted in Post-Impressionism, From Van Gogh to Gauguin, John Rewald, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1956, p. 86
undated quotes

“The image that creates this thinking gives rise to a feeling of evidence and a conviction that it is not based on reason. This kind of thinking explains the reaction we so often note among our contemporaries: when someone asks them to give the reason for their opinions, they answer: "It’s evident." This thinking, which creates prejudices and stereotypes, is the domain of the unquestionable. Obviously you cannot dispute with an image, and you cannot challenge the hero of a film. But this extends to the mental images produced by the film: there is no criticism or debate possible, because these involve differing methods of thought. What produces immediate assent cannot bear the discussion process. The conviction acquired in this way can only be attacked on its own ground: by other images.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

J. Hanks, trans. (1985), p. 213
The Humiliation of the Word (1981)

Way, Feeling, Thinking

“It is seen as the application of a systematic “scientific method” involving wearing a white coat and being dull. I feel that too many young people come into science with this view, and that too many fields degenerate into the kind of work which results: automatic crank-turning and data-collecting of the sort which Kuhn calls “normal science” and Rutherford “stamp-collecting”. In fact, the creation of new science is a creative act, literally, and people who are not creative are not very good at it.”

Philip Warren Anderson (1923) American physicist

in Some ideas on the Aesthetics of Science, address presented by Philip W. Anderson as the Nishina Memorial Lecture at the 50th Anniversary Seminar of the Faculty of Science&Technology, at Keio University (Tokyo), on May 18, 1989.

People, Feeling, Science

“The accounting methods based on mathematical models, the use of computers for computations and information data processing make up only one part of the control mechanism, another part is the control structure.”

Leonid Kantorovich (1912–1986) Russian mathematician

"Mathematics in Economics: Achievements, Difficulties, Perspectives," 1975

Mathematics, Parting

“Engineers, scientists, and statisticians have, until recently, been the groups chiefly interested in activity called quality control. These technologists have been primarily concerned with the technical methods which have become associated with the subject. They have applied these methods to a number of industrial quality problems.
Excellent results in improving quality and in reducing costs are now being reported from these applications. These reports have generated growing interest by industrial managers in the potentialities of quality control as a business method.
What, management is asking, is meant by the term "quality control"? Is there anything really new about it? What are the quality-control activities? What is the proper organization for quality control? How much does the program cost, and what benefits can result from it? Is quality control good only for mass production? May it be useful in a job shop as well? How do statistical methods fit into the quality-control pattern? What does quality control mean to the foreman, to the design engineer, to the salesman? How is quality control introduced to a company?”

Armand V. Feigenbaum (1922–2014) American businessman

Source: Quality Control: Principles, Practice, and Administration. 1951, p. vii; Preface: lead paragraph

Business, Problem

“Dada is a farce, a legend, a state of myth. A badly behaved myth whose subterranean survival and capricious manifestation upset everyone... The aesthetic of absolute negativity has been changed into methodical doubt, thanks to which it will finally be able to incarnate new signs... After the NO and the ZERO, there is a third position for the myth; the anti-art gesture of Marcel Duchamp has been charged with positive energy. The Dada spirit identifies itself with a method of appropriation of exterior reality of the modern world... The ready-made is no longer the height of negativity or of polemic, but the basis element of a new expressive repertoire. Such is the New Realism: a direct means for getting one's feet back on the ground but at 40 degree above Dada zero.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 41, note 30

World, Art, Reality, Change

“We can testify to these opinions, not by our words but by our actions. Our country can not exist on the renunciation of the heroic souls of the past. Public service, from the action of the humblest voter to the most exalted office, can not be made a mere matter of hire and salary. The supporters of our institutions must be inspired by a more dominant motive than a conviction that their actions are going to be profitable. We can not lower our standards to what we think will pay, but we must raise them to what we think is right. It is only in that direction that we shall find true patriotism. It is only by that method that we can maintain the rights of the individual, the sovereignty of the States, the integrity of the Union, the permanency of peace, and the welfare of mankind. You soldiers of the Republic enrolled under her banner that through your sacrifices there might be an atonement for the evils of your day. That is the standard of citizenship for all time. It is the requirement which must be met by those who hold public place. That must be the ideal of those who are worthy to share in the glory which you have given to the name of America, the ideal of those who hold fellowship with Washington and Lincoln.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Peace, Soul, Motivation, Support

“(When asked about the method for a trick where a member of the public answers a public pay-phone only to immediately slump to the floor as if asleep) I was saying ‘there’s fifty quid under the phone book. Just pretend. You’re on TV’.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Books

“The story begins with a somewhat disgruntled hero, who perceived of the world as populated with stupid people, everywhere committing the environmental fallacy. The fallacy was a case not merely of the “mind’s falling into error,” but rather of the mind leading all of us into incredible dangers as it first builds crisis and then attacks crisis.
Like all heroes, this one looked about for resources, for aids that would help in a dangerous battle, and he found plenty of support – in both the past and the present. It won’t hurt to summarize the story thus far. If the intellect is to engage in the heroic adventure of securing improvement in the human condition, it cannot rely on “approaches,” like politics and morality, which attempt to tackle problems head-on, within the narrow scope. Attempts to address problems in such a manner simply lead to other problems, to an amplification of difficulty away from real improvement. Thus the key to success in the hero’s attempt seems to be comprehensiveness. Never allow the temptation to be clear, or to use reliable data, or to “come up to the standards of excellence,” divert you from the relevant, even though the relevant may be elusive, weakly supported by data, and requiring loose methods.
Thus the academic world of Western twentieth century society is a fearsome enemy of the systems approach, using as it does a politics to concentrate the scholars’ attention on matters that are scholastically respectable but disreputable from a systems-planning point of view.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (1979), p. 145; cited in C. WEST CHURCHMAN: CHAMPION OF THE SYSTEMS APPROACH http://filer.case.edu/nxb41/churchman.html, 2004-2007 Case Western Reserve University

People, Stupidity, World, Error

“The phenomenon of the production of motion by heat has not been considered from a sufficiently general point of view. We have considered it only in machines… [for which] the phenomenon is… incomplete. It becomes difficult to recognize its principles and study its laws. …[T]he principle of the production of motion by heat… must be considered independently of any mechanism or… particular agent. It is necessary to establish principles applicable not only to steam-engines but to all imaginable heat-engines, whatever the working substance and whatever the method by which it is operated.”

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832) French physicist, the "father of thermodynamics" (1796–1832)

Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)

Law, Imagination, Study

“Granting this premise, the anarchist position appeared logical to me, as it did to Prince Kropotkin and Bakunin. Putting it roughly, if all men are human, if all bipeds classifiable as homo sapiens are human beings, social harmony and a general progress in civilization will be far better brought about by methods of free agreement and voluntary association than by constraint, whether directly under force, or under the menace of force which is always implicit in obedience to law.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

A Little Conserva-tive (1936)

Men, Law, Appearance

“Systems inquiry has demonstrated its capability in dealing effectively with highly complex and large-scale problem situations. It has orchestrated the efforts of various disciplines within the framework of systems thinking. It has introduced systems approaches and methods to the analysis, design, development, evaluation, and management of systems of all kinds”

Béla H. Bánáthy (1919–2003) Hungarian linguist and systems scientist

Source: Systems Design of Education (1991), p. 31 as cited in: K.C Laszlo (1998) Dimensions of Systems Thinking http://archive.syntonyquest.org/elcTree/resourcesPDFs/Systems_Thinking.pdf. Working paper on syntonyquest.org

Problem, Thinking, Effort

“It is of great importance in a republic, not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority, that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Federalist No. 51 (6 February 1788)
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Communication, Evil, Parting

“To understand events as experienced by actual men and institutions we must be concerned with the history of errors and false starts as well as successes-although we make this distinction on the basis of what we now know of the tradition of success. As we go back in time the uncertainty of the outlook and of the objectives of scientific inquiries increases. The essence of the scientific movement is research. The answers to the essential question, what to do in scientific research-what questions to put to nature, by what methods to get answers, what to count as satisfactory answers-became clear only by the accumulation of successes and the marking of failures.”

Alistair Cameron Crombie (1915–1996) Australian zoologist, historian of science

A. C. Crombie, 1963. as cited in: Robert Maxwell Young. Mind, Brain, and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century, 1970. p. 101.

Men, Error, History, Failure

“This method of mine takes its beginnings where Cavalieri ends his Method of indivisibles…. for as his was the Geometry of indivisibles, so I have chosen to call my method the Arithmetic of infinitesimals.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

Arithmetica Infinitorum (1656)

“Has the contemporary church been so captivated by the images and methods of the consumer culture that it has forfeited its sacred vocation to be a countercultural agent of God's kingdom in the world?”

Skye Jethani

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

God, World

“The Buddha Dhamma is not based on the fear of the unknown, but is founded on the bedrock of facts which can be tested by ourselves and verified by experience. Buddhism is, therefore rational and intensely practical.Such a rational and practical system cannot contain mysteries or esoteric doctrines. Blind faith, therefore, is foreign to Buddhism. Where there is no blind faith there cannot be any coercion or persecution or fanaticism. To the unique credit of Buddhism it must be said that throughout its peaceful march of 2500 years no drop of blood was shed in the name of the Buddha, no mighty monarch wielded his powerful sword to propagate the Dhamma, and no conversion was made either by force or by repulsive methods. Yet, the Buddha was the first and the greatest missionary that lived on earth.”

Narada Maha Thera (1898–1983) Sri Lankan monk and missionary

Buddhism in a Nutshell

Fear, Peace, Faith

“The movie stars Michelle Pfeiffer as LouAnne Johnson… [h]er teaching methods are inventive. She bribes them with candy bars and free trips to amusement parks, and involves them in the words of that important poet, Bob Dylan (the Tambourine Man might have been a drug dealer!). Soon they're in the school library, finding connections between Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas… [w]hat, exactly, will these disadvantaged inner-city kids accomplish by being bribed with candy bars and the "relevancy" of Bob Dylan? Can they read and write? Can they compete in the job market? An educational system that has brought them to the point we observe in the first classroom scene has already failed them so miserably that all of Miss Johnson's karate lessons are not going to be much help.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review of http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dangerous-minds-1995 Dangerous Minds (11 August 1995) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Education, School, Star, Reading

“I discovered soon that teaching has the handicap of retrospection. And that I don't believe in. So I started [at the w:Bauhaus in Dessau] instead a method of handling material with the material itself. So that was my main change. Whereas Itten before [Itten left the Bauhaus in 1923 and Albers followed him as art-teacher] had only spoken about the appearance, 'matiere' - (the French word) and I said I would turn from 'matiere' - the outside - to the inside, to the capacity of the material, before the appearance. And that changed the attitude basically I think.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Art, Thinking, Teachers, Appearance

“Peace has an economic foundation to which too little attention has been given. No student can doubt that it was to a large extent the economic condition of Europe that drove those overburdened countries headlong into the World War. They were engaged in maintaining competitive armaments. If one country laid the keel of one warship, some other country considered it necessary to lay the keel of two warships. If one country enrolled a regiment, some other country enrolled three regiments. Whole peoples were armed and drilled and trained to the detriment of their industrial life, and charged and taxed and assessed until the burden could no longer be borne. Nations cracked under the load and sought relief from the intolerable pressure by pillaging each other. It was to avoid a repetition of such a catastrophe that our Government proposed and brought to a successful conclusion the Washing- ton Conference for the Limitation of Naval Armaments. We have been altogether desirous of an extension of this principle and for that purpose have sent our delegates to a preliminary conference of nations now sitting at Geneva. Out of that conference we expect some practical results. We believe that other nations ought to join with us in laying aside their suspicions and hatreds sufficiently to agree among themselves upon methods of mutual relief from the necessity of the maintenance of great land and sea forces. This can not be done if we constantly have in mind the resort to war for the redress of wrongs and the enforcement of rights. Europe has the League of Nations. That ought to be able to provide those countries with certain political guaranties which our country does not require. Besides this there is the World Court, which can certainly be used for the determination of all justifiable disputes. We should not underestimate the difficulties of European nations, nor fail to extend to them the highest degree of patience and the most sympathetic consideration. But we can not fail to assert our conviction that they are in great need of further limitation of armaments and our determination to lend them every assistance in the solution of their problems. We have entered the conference with the utmost good faith on our part and in the sincere belief that it represents the utmost good faith on their part. We want to see the problems that are there presented stripped of all technicalities and met and solved in a way that will secure practical results. We stand ready to give our support to every effort that is made in that direction.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

Life, War, People, World

“The method of the twentieth century is to use not single but multiple models for experimental exploration – the technique of the suspended judgement.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 81

“It is less than four years since cohomological methods (i. e. methods of Homological Algebra) were introduced into Algebraic Geometry in Serre's fundamental paper[11], and it seems certain that they are to overflow the part of mathematics in the coming years, from the foundations up to the most advanced parts. … [11] Serre, J. P. Faisceaux algébriques cohérents. Ann. Math. (2), 6, 197–278”

Alexander Grothendieck (1928–2014) French mathematician

1955
[1960, Cambridge University Press, The cohomology theory of abstract algebraic varieties, Proc. Internat. Congress Math.(Edinburgh, 1958), 103–118, https://webusers.imj-prg.fr/~leila.schneps/grothendieckcircle/CohomologyVarieties.pdf] (p. 103)

Mathematics, Parting

“We have learned coordination of mind and body and the "ki breathing methods". Therefore we can bring the ki of the universe into our bodies at anytime. When a water pump is dried out, no water can flow from the well up through the pump. To start this flow again we must put some water back into the pump. In the same way, ki does not flow strongly in a person suffering from illness or misfortune. Let us practice "kiatsuho" to put back into these people, stimulate their own flow of ki, and give them a fresh start to happiness.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

16. Kiatsuho - pressing with ki
Ki Sayings (2003)

Happiness, People, Way, Suffering

“With [Francis] Bacon, Vico continuously asserts the claims of grammar as true science precisely because it has not yielded to specialism and method.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 220

Science

“We have a word game in English called "Twenty questions." To play Twenty Questions, one player imagines some object, and the other players must guess what it is by asking questions that can be answered with a "yes" or a "no." I imagine every language has a similar game, and, for those of us who speak the language of science, the game is called The Scientific Method.”

K. Barry Sharpless (1941) American chemist

Nobel Banquet speech, 2001

Imagination, Game, Question, Science

“The fact must be expressed as data, but there is a problem in that the correct data is difficult to catch. So that I always say "When you see the data, doubt it!" "When you see the measurement instrument, doubt it!… For example, if the methods such as sampling, measurement, testing and chemical analysis methods were incorrect, data… to measure true characteristics and in an unavoidable case, using statistical sensory test and express them as data.”

Kaoru Ishikawa (1915–1989) Japanese business theorist

Kaoru Ishikawa in: Annual Quality Congress Transactions, (1981), p. 130

Problem

“These Chinese novels are not perfect according to Western standards. They are not always planned from beginning to end, nor are they compact, any more than life is planned or compact. They are often too long, too full of incident, too crowded with character, a medley of fact and fiction as to material, and a medley of romance and realism as to method, so that an impossible event of magic or dream may be described with such exact semblance of detail that one is compelled to belief against all reason”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

The Chinese Novel (1938)

Life, Dreams, Perfection

“The term division of labor has, from long usage, become associated in the public mind with manual processes. But productive labor is, in general, both manual and mental and just as there may be division of manual labor so there may be division of mental labor or division of thought. Modern productive methods tend constantly to separate mental labor from manual labor and then to subdivide each into smaller and smaller parts. The subdivision of manual labor is greatly furthered, as has been seen, by the extended use of tools. Subdivision of mental labor on the other hand is hastened by an increase in the amount of knowledge and mental development necessary to successfully perform the work in hand. Thus the mental labor of designing machinery is performed largely apart from the actual production; and this mental labor has become very closely specialized as the scientific basis of engineering has grown. This process of subdivision is greatly hastened in both manual and mental operations by increased quantity since this, of itself, enables the manager to avail himself of the inherent advantages of division of labor already discussed.”

Dexter S. Kimball (1865–1952) American engineer

Source: Principles of industrial organization, 1913, p. 48

Knowledge, Parting

“Stalin's methods did not help.”

Anastas Mikoyan (1895–1978) Russian revolutionary and Soviet statesman

As quoted in "One Man Alone: Richard Nixon" (1969) by Ralph de Toledano, p. 243

Help

“The engineer must be able not only to design, but to execute. A draftsman may be able to design, but unless he is able to execute his designs to successful operation he cannot be classed as an engineer. The production engineer must be able to execute his work as he has planned it. This requires two qualifications in addition to technical engineering ability: He must know men, and he must have creative ability in applying good statistical, accounting, and " system" methods to any particular production work he may undertake.”

Hugo Diemer (1870–1937) American mechanical engineer

Source: "Industrial Engineering," 1905, p. 67

Men, Success

“A more structured connection with the mass is needed, and we must improve it in the course of the coming years. But as far as initiatives originating in the upper strata of the government are concerned, we are currently utilizing the almost intuitive method of sounding out general reactions to the great problems we confront.
In this Fidel is a master. His own special way of fusing himself with the people can be appreciated only by seeing him in action. At the great public mass meetings one can observe something like the dialogue of two tuning forks whose vibrations interact, producing new sounds. Fidel and the mass begin to vibrate together in a dialogue of growing intensity until they reach the climax in an abrupt conclusion crowned by our cry of struggle and victory.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

People, Way, Problem, Victory

“Your modern methods of communication are in fact modeled after your inner ones.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 932, Page 456
Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Volume Two (1986)

Communication

“Lysenkoism is held up by bourgeois commentators as the supreme demonstration that conscious ideology cannot inform scientific practice and that "ideology has no place in science." On the other hand, some writers are even now maintaining a Lysenkoist position because they believe that the principles of dialectical materialism contradict the claims of genetics. Both of these claims stem from a vulgarisation of Marxist philosophy through deliberate hostility, in the first case, or ignorance, in the second. Nothing in Marx, Lenin or Mao contradicts the particular physical facts and processes of a particular set of natural phenomena in the objective world, because what they wrote about nature was at a high level of abstraction. The error of the Lysenkoist claim arises from attempting to apply a dialectical analysis of physical problems from the wrong end. Dialectical materialism is not, and has never been, a programmatic method for solving particular physical problems. Rather, dialectical analysis provides an overview and a set of warning signs against particular forms of dogmatism and narrowness of thought. It tells us, "Remember that history may leave an important trace. Remember that being and becoming are dual aspects of nature. Remember that conditions change and that the conditions necessary to the initiation of some process may be destroyed by the process itself. Remember to pay attention to real objects in space and time and not lose them utterly in idealized abstractions. Remember that qualitative effects of context and interaction may be lost when phenomena are isolated."”

Richard C. Lewontin (1929) American evolutionary biologist

And above all else, "Remember that all the other caveats are only reminders and warning signs whose application to different circumstances of the real world is contingent."
"The Problem of Lysenkoism" by Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins, in Hilary and Steven Rose (eds.), The Radicalisation of Science, Macmillan, 1976, p. 58.

Hostility, World, Error, History

“It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.”

Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827) French mathematician and astronomer

Quoted in H Eves Return to Mathematical Circles (Boston 1988). http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Quotations/Laplace.html

Men, Idea, Appearance

“I believe in working every day, and not necessarily repeating one way of working. I like to make something come out of trial and error methods – fooling around with mediums and taking the chance of its not coming to everything.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Kenneth Noland, p. 9
Conversation with Karen Wilkin' (1986-1988)

Fools, Way, Error, Chance

“Yet people who benefit from this now viciously defy Westminster, purporting to act as though they were an elected government, spending their lives sponging on Westminster and British democracy and then systematically assault democratic methods. Who do these people think they are?”

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

Broadcast (25 May 1974), referring to the Ulster Workers Council strike, quoted in The Times (27 May 1974), p. 2
Prime Minister

People, Democracy, Thinking

“Call me an extremist but killing a few hundred million people seems like the sort of method that might have unintended consequences.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[d45qug$pc5$1@reader1.panix.com, 2005]
2000s

People

“I believe in non-violent methods of struggle as most effective in the long run for building up successful working class power. Where they cannot be followed or where they are not even permitted by the ruling class, obviously only violent tactics remain. I champion civil liberty as the best of the non-violent means of building the power on which workers rule must be based. If I aid the reactionaries to get free speech now and then, if I go outside the class struggle to fight against censorship, it is only because those liberties help to create a more hospitable atmosphere for working class liberties. The class struggle is the central conflict of the world; all others are incidental.”

Roger Nash Baldwin (1884–1981) American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) co-founder

Article from Soviet Russia Today

World, Success, Help, Fight

“If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough — you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal. In other words, you need to be pragmatic.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1990s, Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism (1998)

World

“The realization of the pathetic frailty of the knowledge or beliefs on which our life depends thus leads not to despair but to open-eyed courage. But it also points to a most intimate connection between scientific method and liberal civilization. Science is not, as is popularly conceived, a new set of dogmas taught by a newer and better set of priests called scientists. It is rather a method which is based on a critical attitude to all plausible and self-evident propositions. It seeks not to reject them, but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives. This open eye for possible alternatives, each to receive the same logical treatment before we can determine which is the better grounded, is the essence of liberalism in art, morals, and politics.... Like science, liberalism insists on a critical examination of the content of all our beliefs, principles, or initial hypotheses and on subjecting them to a continuous process of verification so that they will be progressively better founded in experience and reason.”

Morris Raphael Cohen (1880–1947) American philosopher

Language in Thought and Action, p. 271, (1939), S.I. Hayakawa

Life, Art, Courage, Support

“At the present we have no adequate scientific method for representing the psychological life span. In accord with the general methods of psychology, the study of environmental influences began with classification and statistics… they gave us excellent descriptions of the home environment. The method of representation is partly akin to that of the novelist i. e., one trying to make as lifelike picture of the situation as possible by choosing expressive words and bringing out significant traits with examples. In general, the descriptions that have been made valuable to science have not been those made by scientific methods. Where theoretical concepts have been introduced with the concrete description, they often stand out as something alien. In stead of scientific descriptions they are nothing more than speculative interpretation.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, Principles of topological psychology, 1936, p. 12-13.

Life, Home, Study, Science

“Learning an imposed method seemed not in my nature”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Quote from his autobiography,Unfinished Journey”
Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

Nature, Learning

“The revolution in scientific ideas just mentioned is primarily logical. It is due to recognition that the very method of physical science, with its primary standard units of mass, space, and time, is concerned with measurements of relations of change, not with individuals as such.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

Idea, Science, Change, Time

“I began graduate work in the philosophy of sciences at the University of Pennsylvania in 1941 where I came under the influence of the “grand old man” of the department, the eminent philosopher E. A. Singer, Jr. Because of the informality of the department he created I began to collaborate with two younger members of the faculty, both of whom were former students of Singer, Thomas A. Cown and C. West Churchman.
Three aspects of Singer's philosophy had a particularly strong influence on me. First, that the practice of philosophy, its application, was necessary for the development of philosophy itself. Second, that effective work on “real” problems required an interdisciplinary approach. Third, that the social area needed more work than any of the other domains of science and that this was the most difficult.
We developed a concept of a research group that would enable us to practice philosophy in the social domain by dealing with real problems. The organization we designed was called “The Institute of Experimental Method.””

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

With the participation of a number of other graduate students in philosophy and a few other members of the faculty we started this institute on a completely informal basis. Preface, cited in Gharajedaghi, Jamshid. Systems thinking: Managing chaos and complexity: A platform for designing business architecture http://booksite.elsevier.com/samplechapters/9780123859150/Front_Matter.pdf. Elsevier, 2011. p. xii Towards a Systems Theory of Organization, 1985

Problem, Strong, Universe, Science

“I am old-fashioned enough to retain David Hume’s view that one can never derive “ought” propositions from “is” propositions. The two issues, method and value, are distinct.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

Kenneth Arrow, "Methodological Individualism and Social Knowledge", American Economic Review (1994)
1970s-1980s

Fashion

“What was good about Bill was that whenever he wrote a plot, he did a lot of research for it. Whether the setting was a railroad station or a factory, he would find a photo reference, usually from National Geographic, and give Bob all the research to draw from. He was very orderly and methodical. His only problem was that he couldn't sustain the work… he couldn't produce material regularly enough”

Bill Finger (1914–1974) American comic strip and comic book writer

George Roussos as quoted by George Roussos in Gruenwald, Mark (April 1983). "George Roussos". Comics Interview (2) (Fictioneer Books). pp. 45–51.
About

Photo, Problem, Drawing

“There are four distinct bases on which a system-design book might be organized. First are the chronological phases through which the system-design effort passes, such as organization and preliminary design. Second are the logical steps such as analysis of the single thread (operation on a single input) and high traffic (methods of handling multiplex inputs). Third are the parts of the system, such as communications and displays. Fourth are the tools of system design, such as information theory and queueing theory.”

Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer

Source: System Engineering (1957), p. 8

Books, Communication, Effort, Parting

“We found a round figure of three million Jews in Poland, and then immediately after that came the Russian campaign and we found another five million Jews in Russia. How on Earth could we manage to emigrate this eight million by using long and tiresome official methods if we could not, as was planned somehow or other after the war organise a general and mass-protected and organised emigration to Madagascar? We had conquered France, after all, and we could have compensated France adequately from our other colonial possessions so we could have used Madagascar — the island was big enough to accommodate such a number of Jews — but in the war we were cut off. We had no other choice.”

Karl Wolff (1900–1984) SS general

Quoted in "Holocaust and the Moving Image" - Page 143 - by Toby Haggith, Joanna Newman - 2005

War

“Education on the value of free speech and the other freedoms reserved by the Bill of Rights, about what happens when you don't have them, and about how to exercise and protect them, should be an essential prerequisite for being an American citizen — or indeed a citizen of any nation, the more so to the degree that such rights remain unprotected. If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 25 : Real Patriots Ask Questions

Children, World, Education, Exercises

“It is difficult to say when algebra as a science began in China. Problems which we should solve by equations appear in works as early as the Nine Sections (K'iu-ch'ang Suan-shu) and so may have been known by the year 1000 B. C. In Liu Hui's commentary on this work (c. 250) there are problems of pursuit, the Rule of False Position… and an arrangement of terms in a kind of determinant notation. The rules given by Liu Hui form a kind of rhetorical algebra.
The work of Sun-tzï contains various problems which would today be considered algebraic. These include questions involving indeterminate equations. …Sun-tzï solved such problems by analysis and was content with a single result…
The Chinese certainly knew how to solve quadratics as early as the 1st century B. C., and rules given even as early as the K'iu-ch'ang Suan-shu… involve the solution of such equations.
Liu Hui (c. 250) gave various rules which would now be stated as algebraic formulas and seems to have deduced these from other rules in much the same way as we should…
By the 7th century the cubic equation had begun to attract attention, as is evident from the Ch'i-ku Suan-king of Wang Hs'iao-t'ung (c. 625).
The culmination of Chinese is found in the 13th century. …numerical higher equations attracted the special attention of scholars like Ch'in Kiu-shao (c.1250), Li Yeh (c. 1250), and Chu-Shï-kié (c. 1300), the result being the perfecting of an ancient method which resembles the one later developed by W. G. Horner”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

1819
Source: History of Mathematics (1925) Vol.2, Ch. 6: Algebra

Way, Question, Problem, Appearance

“The general method involved may be very simply stated. In cases where the equilibrium values of our variables can be regarded as the solutions of an extremum (maximum or minimum) problem, it is often possible regardless of the number of variables involved to determine unambiguously the qualitative behavior of our solution values in respect to changes of parameters.”

Paul A. Samuelson book Foundations of Economic Analysis

Source: 1940s, Foundations of Economic Analysis, 1947, Ch. 2 : The Theory of Maximizing Behavior

Behavior, Problem, Change

“I began to reconcile myself to my forlorn condition, but still I was not what I wished to be: the worst of all was, I had no friend; not a human being that understood me. I wrote daily to my friend Leisewitz; he resided in Hanover, and was just as unhappy as myself, except that he had some friends, and plenty of money. In this respect I was differently situated, and although in want of money to buy books, I was determined not to be any expense to my father. Some watches, snuff-boxes, and rings, presents I had received in Gottingen, soon found their way to the hands of Jews at half price. I was even, against my will, driven to the necessity of accepting small fees from mechanics and peasants. This cut me to the heart; but I could not help myself. The following circumstance, however, overcame me more than all: My father was a man of great knowledge and experience, but, like all old men, he remained faithful to the old method of practice. I visited many of his patients, and without telling me exactly what mode of treatment I was to pursue, he only observed, "You will act so and sohowever, I saw the patients had confidence in my father only, and not in me; they wished me to be his tool, and I therefore followed his mode of practice, and thus lost several of his patients, who could have been saved had I followed my own method.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Men, Money, Books, Faith

“We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. Presumably the plans for our employment were being changed. I was to learn later in life that, perhaps because we are so good at organizing, we tend as a nation to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.”

Charlton Ogburn (1911–1998) American journalist and author

From "Merrill's Marauders: The truth about an incredible adventure" http://www.harpers.org/archive/1957/01/0007289 in the January 1957 issue of Harper's Magazine Usually misattributed to Petronius See Brown, David S. "Petronius or Ogburn?", Public Administration Review, Vol. 38, No. 3 (May - Jun., 1978), p. 296 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0033-3352(197805%2F06)38%3A3%3C296%3APOO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z alternate version:As a result, I suppose, of high-level changes of mind about how we were to be used, we went though several reorganizations. Perhaps because Americans as a nation have a gift for organizing, we tend to meet any new situation by reorganization, and a wonderful method it is for creating the illusion of progress at the mere cost of confusion, inefficiency and demoralization. The Maurauders (1959) chapter 2, page 60

Life, Learning, Change, Time

“I thought fit to… explain in detail in the same book the peculiarity of a certain method, by which it will be possible… to investigate some of the problems in mathematics by means of mechanics. This procedure is… no less useful even for the proof of the theorems themselves; for certain things first became clear to me by a mechanical method, although they had to be demonstrated by geometry afterwards… But it is of course easier, when we have previously acquired, by the method, some knowledge of the questions, to supply the proof than it is to find it without any previous knowledge.”

Archimedes book The Method of Mechanical Theorems

The Method of Mechanical Theorems

Books, Mathematics, Question, Knowledge

“There is another and higher leadership, that of the intellect, by which the methods and thoughts of one man may affect the whole civilized world. Industrial leaders who have most prominently attracted our attention in the past are those who have, by their inventions or their direction of activities, accumulated large fortunes; but none of these are as great as the man who by the force of his intellect leads people throughout the civilized world to benefit themselves and others. Such a man was the late Frederick Winslow Taylor who, in his determination to eliminate error and to base our industrial relations on fact, set an example which will have an effect all over the world”

Henry Gantt (1861–1919) American engineer

Source: Industrial leadership, 1916, p. 27. Highlighted section quoted in: A. Johansson (1986) "The Labour Movement and the Emergence of Taylorism". in: Economic and Industrial Democracy November 1986 vol. 7 no. 4 pp.449-485.

People, World, Error, Past

“What sometimes enrages me and always disappoints and grieves me is the preference of great schools of learning for the derivative as opposed to the original, for the conventional and thin which can be duplicated in many copies rather than the new and powerful, and for arid correctness and limitation of scope and method rather than for universal newness and beauty, wherever it may be seen.”

Norbert Wiener book The Human Use of Human Beings

VIII. Role of the Intellectual and the Scientist. p. 135
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)

School, Beauty, Disappointment, Learning

“The members of the Invisible College did not live to see the full flowering of the scientific method, and we will not live to see what use humanity makes of a medium for sharing that is cheap, instant, and global (both in the sense of 'comes from everyone' and 'goes everywhere.') We are, however, the people who are setting the earliest patterns for this medium. Our fate won't matter much, but the norms we set will. Given what we have today, the Internet could easily become Invisible High School, with a modicum of educational material in an ocean of narcissism and social obsessions. We could, however, also use it as an Invisible College, the communicative backbone of real intellectual and civic change.”

Clay Shirky (1964) American technology writer

"The Shock of Inclusion" http://www.edge.org/q2010/q10_1.html#shirky, in The Edge Annual Question — 2010: How Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? http://www.edge.org/q2010/q10_index.html, January 2010

Fate, People, Education, School

“The Russian Armies and all the peoples of the Russian Republic have rallied to the defence of their hearths and homes. … The aggressor is surprised, startled, staggered. For the first time in his experience mass murder has become unprofitable. He retaliates by the most frightful cruelties. As his armies advance, whole districts are being exterminated. Scores of thousands—literally scores of thousands—of executions in cold blood are being perpetrated by the German police-troops upon the Russian patriots who defend their native soil. Since the Mongol invasions of Europe in the sixteenth century, there has never been methodical, merciless butchery on such a scale, or approaching such a scale. And this is but the beginning. Famine and pestilence have yet to follow in the bloody ruts of Hitler's tanks. We are in the presence of a crime without a name.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (24 August 1941), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 1173
The Second World War (1939–1945)

People, Home, Time

“Sen. Bob Smith has succeeded in amending an upcoming appropriations bill to beat back the latest wave of Clinton administration disrespect for two key elements of a free citizenry -- privacy and the right to keep and bear arms. Senator Smith is to be praised for keeping his eye on some balls that might have been lost in the smoke of scandal and misinformation that the Clinton Administration seems endlessly to emit. Actually, few things could make the need for vigorous defense of 2nd Amendment rights clearer than the ongoing spectacle of Clinton['s] contempt for the citizens he is supposed to serve. For the 2nd Amendment is really in the Constitution to give men like Bill Clinton something to think about when their ambition gets particularly over-inflated. The Founders added the 2nd Amendment so that when, after a long train of abuses, a government evinces a methodical design upon our natural rights, we will have the means to protect and recover our rights. That is why the right to keep and bear arms was included in the Bill of Rights.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

The reason for the Second Amendment, WorldNetDaily, Aug. 14, 1998. http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=18629 1998

Men, Nature, Thinking, Training

“The first, and most obvious, feature that separates Habermas’s later treatment of law from his original study of the public sphere is its completely unhistorical method.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 5. "Norming Facts, Jürgen Habermas" (2004)

Law, Study

“We are at a juncture today that really is more of a threshold, even more of a watershed, than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was in 1941. We are currently in a war, but it is not a war on terrorism. In fact, that has been a great confusion, and the sooner we drop that term, the better. This would be like President Franklin Roosevelt saying in World War II, 'We are engaged in a war against kamikazes and blitzkrieg.' Like them, terrorism is a method, a tool, a weapon that has been used against us. And part of the reason we suffered such a horrific attack is that we were not prepared.”

John Lehman (1942) American banker and government official

At the 130th Annual Meeting of the U.S. Naval Institute and Annapolis Naval History Symposium on 31 March 2004. http://www.usni.org/seminars/annualmeeting/04/annualmeeting04Lehman.htm, http://www.johnflehman.com/pdf/proceedings_MAR2004.pdf (PFD)

War, World, Suffering, Parting

“A great many Arabs are alive today because we used these methods and a great many Argyll's are alive today because we used them.”

Colin Campbell Mitchell (1925–1996) British Army officer and politician

Lt Col Colin Mitchell http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7111303.stm.

“It is possible to apply statistical methods to the calculation of nuclear processes provided that the energies involved are large in comparison with the lowest excitation energies of nuclei.”

Victor Frederick Weisskopf (1908–2002) Austrian-born American theoretical physicist

[V. Weisskopf, Statistics and nuclear reactions, Physical Review, 52, 4, 1937, 295–303, https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.52.295]

“There can be few national movements which have renounced as Plaid Cymru has done, the use of methods of war and violence. It has done this… because it knows that it will never see the kind of Wales it wants to build if its methods rest on hatred and the violation of the personalities of others.”

Gwynfor Evans (1912–2005) Welsh politician

Welsh Nationalist Aims http://www.gwynfor.net/lluniau/welsh-nationalist-aims.pdf Published 1966-1970.

War, Personality

“Ever since the last great conflict the world has been putting a renewed emphasis, not on preparation to succeed in war, but on an attempt by preventing war to succeed in peace. This movement has the full and complete approbation of the American Government and the American people. While we have been unwilling to interfere in the political relationship of other countries and have consistently refrained from intervening except when our help has been sought and we have felt that it could be effectively given, we have signified our willingness to become associated with other nations in a practical plan for promoting international justice through the World Court. Such a tribunal furnishes a method of the adjustment of international differences in accordance with our treaty rights and under the generally accepted rules of international law. When questions arise which all parties agree ought to be adjudicated but which do not yield to the ordinary methods of diplomacy, here is a forum to which the parties may voluntarily repair in the consciousness that their dignity suffers no diminution and that their cause will be determined impartially, according to the law and the evidence. That is a sensible, direct, efficient, and practical method of adjusting differences which can not fail to appeal to the intelligence of the American people.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

War, People, World, Peace

“Inferior as a mechanical printing method for ordinary photographic purposes, the gum process may for a time at least be regarded as standing apart for pictorial purposes, because the large amount of personal control which must be exercised before it can be said to show distinct advantages over other methods implies that the controlling hand must be guided by an artist that is, a man of such large instinctive artistic taste that one can hardly conceive that he would be able to produce a better result by painting, and without the use of photography at all, were he to devote the same skill and endeavour to the employment of brush or pencil, instead of photographic appliances.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing methods and their bearing on pictorial photography, p. 73

Exercises, Time, Painting, Personality

“The church has ever opposed the progress of woman on the ground that her freedom would lead to immorality. We ask the church to have more confidence in women. We ask the opponents of this movement to reverse the methods of the church, which aims to keep women moral by keeping them in fear and in ignorance, and to inculcate into them a higher and truer morality based upon knowledge. And ours is the morality of knowledge. If we cannot trust woman with the knowledge of her own body, then I claim that two thousand years of Christian teaching has proved to be a failure.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

The Morality of Birth Control, 18 November 1921, Park Theatre, NY http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/margaretsangermoralityofbirthcontrol.htm

Women, Fear, Confidence, Failure

“I am never in a hurry to reach details. First and above all I am interested in the large masses and the general character of a picture; when these are well established, then I try for subtleties of form and color. I rework the painting constantly and freely, and without any systematic method.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

Quote from Corot's 'Notebooks', ca. 1850, as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 240-241
1850s

Color, Painting

“Inner experience, unable to have principles either in dogma (a moral attitude), or in science (knowledge can be neither its goal nor its origin), or in a search of enriching states (an experimental, aesthetic attitude), it cannot have any other concern nor other goal than itself. Opening myself to inner experience, I have placed in it all value and authority. Henceforth I can have no other value, no other authority (in the realm of mind). Value and authority imply the discipline of a method, the existence of a community.
I call experience a voyage to the end of the possible of man. Anyone may choose not to embark on this voyage, but if he does embark on it, this supposes the negation of the authorities, the existing values which limit the possible. By virtue of the fact that it is negation of other values, other authorities, experience, having a positive existence, becomes itself positively value and authority.
Inner experience has always had objectives other than itself in which one invested value and authority. … If God, knowledge, and suppression of pain were to cease to be in my eyes convincing objectives, … would inner experience from that moment seem empty to me, henceforth impossible without justification? …
I received the answer [from Blanchot]: experience itself is authority.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. 7

God, Pain, Search, Communication

“Owen believed in common archetypes rather than a common ancestor, and his conduct presents an archetype of the modern creation scientists, except that they submit to peer review rarely, (if ever) and none of them are experts in anything. They’ve never produced any research indicative of their position. They cannot substantiate any of their assertions, and they’ve never successfully refuted anyone else’s hypotheses either. But every argument of evidence they’ve ever made in favor of creation has been refuted immediately and repeatedly. All they’ve ever been able to do was criticize real science, and even then the absolute best arguments they’ve ever come up with were all disproved in a court of law with mountains of research standing against their every allegation. Yet creationists still use those same ridiculous rationalizations because they will never accept where their beliefs are in error! Their only notable strength is how anyone can be so consistently proven to be absolutely wrong about absolutely everything, 100% of the time, for such a long time, and still make-believe theirs is the absolute truth. More amazing still is how often they will actually lie in defense of their alleged truth. Every publication promoting creation over any avenue of actual science contains misquotes, misdefinitions, and misrepresented misinformation, while their every appeal to reason is based entirely on erroneous assumptions and logical fallacies. There is a madness to their method, but it is naught but propaganda.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"12th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TkY7HrJOhc Youtube (April 19, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Truth, Lie, Law, Error

“Let us look at the history of Ireland, the history of this chronic government by coercion. What does it mean? It was the naked government of another Kingdom by irresponsible force—irresponsible, that is to say, as regards those whom this system was to affect. Coercion Laws were passed, and were smoothly, described as being for the protection of life and property, of respect for ordinary law, and so on. All those methods proved an ugly failure.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1921/dec/14/address-in-reply-to-his-majestys-most#column_7 in the House of Lords (14 December 1921).

Life, Law, History, Failure

“[A rival theory that has to be better than the dominant “90 percent explanation” cannot go wrong very often and still stay in the contest. For the challenger of a 50 percent incumbent, some shortcomings are not that fatal. This comparative situation has to be remembered as argued by James Burnham:]… we must keep in mind an obvious principle of scientiﬁc method. To disprove the theory, it is not enough to show that it is not 100% certain, that difﬁculties confront it, and certain evidence seems to be against it. It must be further shown that it is less certain than alternative theories covering the same subject matter, that there are in its case more difﬁculties, more negative evidence than in the case of at least one alternative theory. No theory about what actually happens and will happen is ever ‘certain’.”

James Burnham (1905–1987) American philosopher

Source: The Managerial Revolution, 1941, p. 274; As cited in: Jan Tullberg "Comparatism — A constructive approach in the philosophy of science." The Journal of Socio-Economics 40 (2011) 444–453

“What has caused confusion and misunderstanding about his Hinduism is the concept of sarva-dharma-samabhAva (equal regard for all religions) which he had developed after deep reflection. Christian and Muslim missionaries have interpreted it to mean that a Hindu can go aver to Christianity or Islam without suffering any spiritual loss. They are also using it as a shield against every critique of their closed and aggressive creeds. The new rulers of India, on the other hand, cite it in order to prop up the Nehruvian version of Secularism which is only a euphemism for anti-Hindu animus shared in common by Christians, Muslims, Marxists and those who are Hindus only by accident of birth. For Gandhiji, however, sarva-dharma-samabhAva was only a restatement of the age-old Hindu tradition of tolerance in matters of belief. Hinduism has always adjudged a man’s faith in terms of his AdhAra (receptivity) and adhikAra (aptitude). It has never prescribed a uniform system of belief or behavior for everyone because, according to it, different persons are in different stages of spiritual development and need different prescriptions for further progress. Everyone, says Hinduism, should be left alone to work out one’s own salvation through one’s own inner seeking and evolution. Any imposition of belief or behaviour from the outside is, therefore, a mechanical exercise which can only do injury to one’s spiritual growth. Preaching to those who have not invited it is nothing short of aggression born out of self-righteousness. That is why Gandhiji took a firm and uncompromising stand against proselytisation by preaching and gave no quarters to the Christian mission’s mercenary methods of spreading the gospel.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)

Age, Faith, Religion, Behavior

“The complete analysis of the methods of scientific inference shows that the theory of inference in science demands the use of ethical judgments”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1940s - 1950s, Theory of Experimental Inference (1948), p. 256; cited in Douglas, H.E. (2009) Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal

Science

“If Governments neglect to invite what noble intellect there is, then too surely all intellect, not omnipotent to resist bad influences, will tend to become beaverish ignoble intellect; and quitting high aims, which seem shut up from it, will help itself forward in the way of making money and such like; or will even sink to be sham intellect, helping itself by methods which are not only beaverish but vulpine, and so "ignoble" as not to have common honesty.”

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

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The New Downing Street (April 15, 1850)

Money, Way, Help

“A plan of large size can be made a reality either by an intensely capitalistic method of development or by a genuinely socialistic approach. The Capitalistic way is ruled out by the fact that the political conditions are wholly incompatible with it, and a pursuit of this method may lead to a political breakdown.”

Gulzarilal Nanda (1898–1998) Prime Minister of India

Source: Gulzarilal Nanda: A Life in the Service of the People, p.32.

Way, Reality

“Wallis was in sympathy with Greek mathematics and astronomy, editing parts of the works of Archimedes, Eutocius, Ptolemy, and Aristarchus; but at the same time he recognized the fact that the analytic method was to replace the synthetic, as when he defined a conic as a curve of the second degree instead of as a section of a cone, and treated it by the aid of coordinates.”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

History of Mathematics (1923) Vol.1

Mathematics, Time, Parting

“What was intended is plain. It was intended to appease them. Why was this particular moment selected for their appeasement? I will tell your Lordships why. It was because a grave threat had been made subversive of civil government in India. … I have had occasion in the last six years to make such study of Indian history as my abilities have qualified me to undertake, and I have drawn one deep lesson. The way to discharge our fiduciary obligations to India is never to yield to threats—never, never! The moment in which to make gestures of appeasement is not when you are threatened by men of influence and authority with a general campaign of civil disturbance. And what a method to select! You address the politically-minded classes of India. They are the only ones with which you are dealing, for you do not suppose that the 290,000,000 of peasants who cannot read are being appeased; they do not need appeasement and we were long since told of their pathetic contentment. What was the object of making this statement at this moment?”

F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead (1872–1930) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1929/nov/05/india-the-viceroys-statement in the House of Lords (5 November 1929)

Men, Law, Way, History

“It is hard to say whether increasing complexity is the cause or the effect of man's effort to cope with his expanding environment. In either case a central feature of the trend has been the development of large and very complex systems which tie together modern society. These systems include abstract or non-physical systems, such as government and the economic system. They also include large physical systems like pipe line and power distribution systems, transportation and electrical communication systems. The growth of these systems has increased the need not only for over-all planning, but also for long-range development of the systems. This need has induced increased interest in the methods by which efficient planning and design can be accomplished in complex situations where no one scientific discipline can account for all the factors. Two similar disciplines which emerged about the time of World War II to cope with these problems are called systems engineering and operations research.”

Arthur D. Hall (1925–2006) American electrical engineer

Source: A methodology for systems engineering, 1962, p. 5: About the evolution of systems engineering; Partly cited in: Allen B. Rosenstein (1965) " Systems engineering and Modern Engineering Design http://books.google.com/books?id=HDp9ReqM314C&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false"

War, World, Communication, Problem

“Formally this work is divided into four parts, but in a sense it consists of two short treatises. One is an exposition of a theory of cooperation and organization and constitutes the first half of the book. The second is a study of the functions and of the methods of operation of executives in formal organizations.”

Chester Barnard book The Functions of the Executive

Preface
The Functions of the Executive (1938)

Books, Sense, Study, Parting