Rennan Barkana's Page of Serious Quotes on Other Subjects
"I quote others only in order the better to
express myself." --- Michel de
Montaigne
"In the discovery of hidden things and the
investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from
sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable
conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators of the
common sort." --- William Gilbert,
1600
"... what would convince me of Design... If man
was made of brass or iron & no way connected with any other organism
which had ever lived, I should perhaps be convinced."
--- Darwin, in an 1861 letter to Asa Gray
"Common sense is as rare as genius."
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but
moderation in principle is always a vice." --- Thomas Paine
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space;
everything else is opinion." ---
Democritus
"All national institutions of churches, whether
Jewish, Christian or Turkish (Muslim), appear to me no other than
human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and
monopolize power and profit." ---
Thomas Paine
"But such is the irresistable nature of truth,
that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of
appearing." --- Thomas Paine
"Character is much easier kept than
recovered." --- Thomas Paine
"We must all hang together, or we shall all hang
separately." --- Benjamin Franklin
"It is an affront to treat falsehood with
complaisance." --- Thomas Paine
"That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too
lightly." --- Thomas Paine
"An investment in knowledge always pays the best
interest." --- Benjamin Franklin
"He that lives upon hope will die
fasting." --- Benjamin Franklin
"If you would persuade, you must appeal to
interest rather than intellect."
--- Benjamin Franklin
"Remember not only to say the right thing in the
right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong
thing at the tempting moment." ---
Benjamin Franklin
"Well done is better than well said." --- Benjamin Franklin
"Wish not so much to live long as to live
well." --- Benjamin Franklin
"Honesty is the first chapter of the book of
wisdom." --- Thomas Jefferson
"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the
harder I work the more I have of it." --- Thomas Jefferson
"In matters of style, swim with the current; in
matters of principle, stand like a rock." --- Thomas Jefferson
"It is neither wealth nor splendor, but
tranquility and occupation which give happiness." --- Thomas Jefferson
"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over
another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all
circumstances." --- Thomas
Jefferson
"Health is worth more than learning."
--- Thomas Jefferson
"Advertisements... contain the only truths to be
relied on in a newspaper." ---
Thomas Jefferson
" If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute
but one per cent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of
star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought
hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of.
He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his
commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the
smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great
names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and
abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of
his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the
ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain
of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and
the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then
faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman
followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have
sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and
they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat
them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no
infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his
energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are
mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the
secret of his immortality?
"
--- Mark Twain, Harper's Magazine, September 1899
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it
is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so
positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by
science."
--- Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871)
"At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly
contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre
or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny
of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep
nonsense."
--- Carl Sagan, The Fine Art of Baloney Detection
"There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be
discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
even highly probable."
--- H. L. Mencken, 1930
"By the middle 1880's, practically all the roads except those in
the South, were of the present standard gauge. The southern roads were
still five feet between rails.
It was decided to change the gauge of all southern roads to standard,
in one day. This remarkable piece of work was carried out on a Sunday in May
of 1886. For weeks beforehand, shops had been busy pressing wheels in on the
axles to the new and narrower gauge, to have a supply of rolling stock which
could run on the new track as soon as it was ready. Finally, on the day set,
great numbers of gangs of track layers went to work at dawn. Everywhere one
rail was loosened, moved in three and one-half inches, and spiked down in its
new position. By dark, trains from anywhere in the United States could operate
over the tracks in the South, and a free interchange of freight cars everywhere
was possible."
--- Robert Henry, "Trains", 1957
"William James used to preach the 'will to believe.' For my part, I
should wish to preach the 'will to doubt.' ...What is wanted is not
the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact
opposite."
--- Lord Bertrand Arthur William Russell, Skeptical Essays (1928)
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--- George Bernard Shaw
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence
of the improbable."
--- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
"There is something fascinating about science. One
gets such wholesale returns of
conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."
--- Mark Twain
"Academic politics are so vicious precisely because
the stakes are so small."
--- originally attributed to Woodrow Wilson
"The most certain sign of wisdom is
cheerfulness." --- Michel de
Montaigne
"By doubting we all come at truth."
--- Marcus Tullius Cicero
"To be content with what one has is the greatest
and truest of riches." --- Marcus
Tullius Cicero
"Those who have never entered upon scientific
pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are
surrounded." --- Herbert Spencer
"Observation and theory get on best when they are
mixed together, both helping one another in the pursuit of truth. It
is a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in a theory until it has
been confirmed by observation. I hope I shall not shock the
experimental physicists too much if I add that it is also a good rule
not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are
put forward until they have been confirmed by
theory. " --- Sir Arthur Eddington,
1934
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