Page updated 01/01/2024 Previous Version 07/02/2023
There were some interesting sayings and quotes I discovered. These are another way of provoking thought and discussion. I started creating my own sayings which emerged as I read books, documents, and website information while thinking about all humans. I was biased towards sayings which seemed to contain honesty, truth and insight into the human condition.
I have discovered that many sayings are really just paraphrasing and sometimes misunderstanding the author’s original intent or words. It helps to see the original documents and have some historical context of the person and the times. This is difficult when documents are translated from old languages.
Some “sayings” just keep getting repeated and take on a life of their own – like myths or legends – and have little connection with the original text or documents.
Richard Dawkin’s “Memes” concept describes some of this. In many ways these sayings are pithy messages of ideas and thinking exercises from one human to another. I am now generating much of the HTML for this page from my database. I keep this in the order of my focus and discovery.
This is my best life– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Why Question?– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
There are more Questions than Answers– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Thinking is not a crime– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Blessed are the answer worshippers, for thaye learn nothing– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Every Human is ignorant– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
I am nearly clever enough to know how much I don’t know– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
I love humans, they are my favorite people– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
If we are all the same, what sort of universe would that be?– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Humanism is the Uniting Force for a Divided World– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Humanism, Its for everybody– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Humanism, we are in it together– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Change and Tension is Vital, How we do it matters– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
We are not all equal– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
No Human is more “Good” than any other Human– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Being different is Human– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Why do you think the best thing to do is treat people badly when they do not agree with you?– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Tell the Truth and Aim Straight– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
There are many ways to approach a problem – don’t rule any out too early (paraphrasing)– Author(Edward de bono)
I respect you too much not to have this argument– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Stories, imagination and certainty can reduce fear and panic in some people– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Life is not a game, where humans are played– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Human ,Feel ,Think ,Question, Inherit, Group, Sequence, Evolve– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Wear unselfish genes– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Share Memes– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.– Author(Christopher Hitchens)
I emote for all humans– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Navigate the tree and surf the chaos – it is fun– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human- in not having to be just happy or just sad- in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time– Author(C. JoyBell C.)
A humanist is someone who does the right thing even though she knows that no one is watching.– Author(Dick McMahan)
Most of us must learn to love people and use things rather than loving things and using people.– Author(Roy T Bennett)
We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That’s it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.– Author(Sam Harris)
We all end up in a self referencing loop. Some do it quicker than others.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Tautology is Tautology– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.– Author(Bertrand Russell)
A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.– Author(Ralph Waldo Emerson)
The economy is after all driven by people. No matter how dire the situation may be, as long as people are firm, a turnaround, revival and progress can be possible.– Author(Daisaku Ikeda)
Hope Is a Decision– Author(Daisaku Ikeda)
Humanists respect truth– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Humanism – the goal of maximizing human flourishing — life, health, happiness, freedom, knowledge, love, richness of experience– Author(Stephen Pinker)
These things thou must always have in mind: What is the nature of the universe, and what is mine–in particular: This unto that what relation it hath: what kind of part, of what kind of universe it is: And that there is nobody that can hinder thee, but that thou mayest always both do and speak those things which are agreeable to that nature, whereof thou art a part – (the Second Book VI)– Author(Marcus Aurelius)
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle between good and evil the essential wheel in the working of things– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
Zarathustra had more courage in his body than any other thinker before or after him. To tell the truth and TO AIM STRAIGHT– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods!– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
no longer to thrust one’s head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which giveth meaning to the earth!– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit.– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
It is true we love life; not because we are wont to live, but because we are wont to love.– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
There is always some madness in love. But there is always, also, some method in madness.– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance.– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
man is something that is to be surpassed– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
As yet humanity hath not a goal– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
Best of all, do I see you, my friends, throw the golden ball! And so tarry I still a little while on the earth–pardon me for it!– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
And others are there who are like eight-day clocks when wound up; they tick, and want people to call ticking–virtue– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
The living thing did I follow; I walked in the broadest and narrowestpaths to learn its nature.– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
Loving and perishing: these have rhymed from eternity. Will to love: that is to be ready also for death. Thus do I speak unto you cowards!– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
To redeem what is past, and to transform every “It was” into “Thus would I have it!”–that only do I call redemption!– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
“It is difficult to live amongst men, because silence is so difficult– especially for a babbler.”– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still.– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
Man, however, is the most courageous animal: thereby hath he overcome every animal. With sound of triumph hath he overcome every pain; human pain, however, is the sorest pain.– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
I pass through this people and keep mine eyes open; they have become SMALLER, and ever become smaller:–THE REASON THEREOF IS THEIR DOCTRINE OF HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE.– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
In my dream, in my last morning-dream, I stood to-day on a promontory– beyond the world; I held a pair of scales, and WEIGHED the world.– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
And verily! Many a thing also that is OUR OWN is hard to bear! And many internal things in man are like the oyster–repulsive and slippery and hard to grasp– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
Deep yellow and hot red–so wanteth MY taste–it mixeth blood with all colours. He, however, who whitewasheth his house, betrayeth unto me a whitewashed soul– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
That man is a bridge and not a goal–rejoicing over his noontides and evenings, as advances to new rosy dawns– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
The good–they have always been the beginning of the end– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
Ye flee from me? Ye are frightened? Ye tremble at this word?– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
Everything goeth, everything returneth; eternally rolleth the wheel of existence. Everything dieth, everything blossometh forth again; eternally runneth on the year of existence– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
It is the HONEY in my veins that maketh my blood thicker, and also my soul stiller.– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
O Zarathustra, everything is a lie in me; but that I collapse–this my collapsing is GENUINE!– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
No one have I yet found who more thoroughly despised himself: even THAT is elevation. Alas, was THIS perhaps the higher man whose cry I heard?– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
“Thy danger is not small, thou free spirit and wanderer! Thou hast had a bad day: see that a still worse evening doth not overtake thee!– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
“They have all of them become PIOUS again, they PRAY, they are mad!”– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
It is worth while living on the earth: one day, one festival with Zarathustra, hath taught me to love the earth.– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
‘Freedom’ ye all roar most eagerly: but I have unlearned the belief in ‘great events,’ when there is much roaring and smoke about them.– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
My working theory is that other markers have placed me on the opposite side of a cultural divide that they feel exists, and they are in the habit of demonizing the people they’ve put on this side of their imaginary divide with whatever moral outrage sounds irreproachable to them– Author(Victoria Hart)
Fortune is of sluggish growth, but ruin is rapid– Author(Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
The sleep of reason brings forth monsters– Author(Christopher Hitchens)
a well-stocked and organized library is important and useful for all areas of human endeavor and is to be regarded on the same level as schools and churches– Author(Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz)
humanity’s “present state, and those through which it has passed, are a necessary constitution of the moral composition of humankind”; that the progress of the natural sciences must be followed by progress in the moral and political sciences “no less certain, no less secure from political revolutions”; that social evils are the result of ignorance and error rather than an inevitable consequence of human nature– Author(Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis of Condorcet)
normal variation provided a basis for the idea that populations produce sufficient variation for artificial or natural selection to operate– Author(Adolphe Quetelet)
The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but your thoughts about it– Author(Eckhart Tolle)
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt– Author(Bertrand Russell)
Don’t Panic– Author(Douglas Adams)
this Body Politique (the idea that nations are like the human body with all its parts)– Author(Thomas Hobbes)
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.– Author(Albert Einstein)
Col. [drinking to Miss.”] Miss, your Health ; may you live all the Days of your Life.– Author(Jonathan Swift)
Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.– Author(William Shakespeare)
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right– Author(Isaac Asimov)
Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible– Author(Frank Zappa)
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric– Author(Bertrand Russell)
A truth that’s told with bad intent, Beats all the lies you can invent– Author(William Blake)
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.– Author(George Bernard Shaw)
I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think– Author(Socrates)
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men – “Yes, my friend, I said; and there lies the point. You must contrive for your future rulers another and a better life than that of a ruler, and then you may have a well-ordered State; for only in the State which offers this, will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but in virtue and wisdom, which are the true blessings of life. Whereas if they go to the administration of public affairs, poor and hungering after their own private advantage, thinking that hence they are to snatch the chief good, order there can never be; for they will be fighting about office, and the civil and domestic broils which thus arise will be the ruin of the rulers themselves and of the whole State. “– Author(Plato)
The best revenge is not to be like your enemy “V. The best kind of revenge is, not to become like unto them.”– Author(Marcus Aurelius)
I was never aware of any other option but to question everything– Author(Noam Chomsky)
I used to be Perfect then I became Human– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Some people believe fairy tales and stories to be true and science to be false– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
To Err is Human, To Forgive is Human, To Live is Human, To Love is Human, etc– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
A Good Theory is one which can be tested to be false– Author(Karl Popper)
What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact– Author(Warren Buffett)
I’ve finally stopped getting dumber (self anointed epitaph)– Author(Paul Erdős)
XLI. The idols of the tribe are inherent in human nature and the very tribe or race of man; for man’s sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of things; on the contrary, all the perceptions both of the senses and the mind bear reference to man and not to the universe, and the human mind resembles those uneven mirrors which impart their own[21] properties to different objects, from which rays are emitted and distort and disfigure them.[11]– Author(Francis Bacon)
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices– Author(William Fitzjames Oldham, William James, Henry Wheeler Shaw)
They who have presumed to dogmatize on nature, as on some well investigated subject, either from self-conceit or arrogance, and in the professorial style, have inflicted the greatest injury on philosophy and learning.– Author(Francis Bacon)
Act on a maxim, the ends of which are such as it might be a universal law for everyone to have.– Author(Immanuel Kant)
Every virtue has its privilege: for example, that of contributing its own little bundle of wood to the funeral pyre of one condemned.– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
Humans usually think “Them” and “us”, Humanists try to think “us”– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Try a Little Kindness – song written by Curt Sapaugh and Bobby Austin– Author(Glen Campbell)
Give Me Some Truth – song– Author(John Lennon)
The road to hell is paved with good intentions– Author(Bernard of Clairvaux)
There is no equity in the universe.– Author(H G Wells (Herbert George Wells))
the function of liberalism in the past was that of putting a limit to the powers of kings. The function of true liberalism in the future will be that of putting a limit to the powers of parliaments.– Author(Herbert Spencer)
It is, then, not merely the right, but the sacred duty, of every honorable and humanitarian thinker to devote himself conscientiously to the settlement of that conflict, and to warding off the dangers that it brings in its train. In our conviction this can only be done by a courageous effort to attain the truth, and by the formation of a clear view of the world—a view that shall be based on truth and conformity to reality.– Author(Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel)
“I can say in my own favour that I was as a boy humane, but I owed this entirely to the instruction and example of my sisters. I doubt indeed whether humanity is a natural or innate quality. I was very fond of collecting eggs, but I never took more than a single egg out of a bird’s nest, except on one single occasion, when I took all, not for their value, but from a sort of bravado. ”– Author(Charles Darwin)
“Like Hartmann, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), the greatest writer of modern Germany, took his start from {146} Schopenhauer, but broke with pessimism at an early date, having come to disbelieve in the hedonism on which it is founded. His restless vanity drove him to improve on Darwinism by interpreting evolution as the means towards creating what he called the Superman–that is, a race as much superior to us as we are to the apes. Progress, however, is not to be in the direction of a higher morality, but of greater power–the Will-to-Power, not the Will-to-Live, being the essence of what is.”– Author(Alfred William Benn)
“It is manifest that man is now subject to much variability. No two individuals of the same race are quite alike. We may compare millions of faces, and each will be distinct. There is an equally great amount of diversity in the proportions and dimensions of the various parts of the body; the length of the legs being one of the most variable points.”– Author(Charles Darwin)
“When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last.” –– Author(Thomas Henry Huxley)
It seems , It is true,to be a law that there can be no ressurection of the decaying mythodologies – An agnostic’s apology, and other essays– Author(Leslie Stephen)
Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely. A government can interfere in discussion only by making it less free than it would otherwise be.– Author(Thomas Babington Macaulay)
(e) THE CONSOLATIONS OF BELIEF, AND THE DISTRESS WE MAY CAUSE BY OUR CANDOUR.– Author(Vivian Phelips)
Socrates does Evil. He does not believe in the gods whom the city believes in, but introduces other new deities. He corrupts The youth. Punishment – death– Author(John Macdonell)
The rich were accussed of crimes that there property might be seized : the crops in the fields were gathered by police. A blight fell upon the land– Author(William Winwood Reade)
The right of thinking freely and acting independently, of using our minds without excessive awe of authority, and shaping our lives without unquestioning obedience to custom, is now a finally accepted principle in some sense or other with every school of thought that has the smallest chance of commanding the future.– Author(John Morley)
Does it not seem strange, when we consider it, that the race of man on earth should go forward, as well and as far it has gone, when all the while most of that which it was thinking and believing was not true?– Author(Henry Maudsley)
The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty– Author(Albert Einstein)
There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off.– Author(Thomas Henry Huxley)
The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.– Author(Thomas Henry Huxley)
“At the heart of the First Amendment is the recognition of the fundamental importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern. The freedom to speak one’s mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty – and thus a good unto itself – but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole. We have therefore been particularly vigilant to ensure that individual expressions of ideas remain free from governmentally imposed sanctions.” – Hustler Magazine v. Falwell – United States Supreme Court– Author(United States Supreme Court)
Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world’s cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. It is fostered by knowledge, openness,communication, and freedom of thought, conscience and belief. Tolerance is harmony in difference.It is not only a moral duty, it is also a political and legal requirement. Tolerance, the virtue that makes peace possible, contributes to the replacement of the culture of war by a culture of peace.– Author(UNESCO)
Religions store collected stories/wisdom/ignorance of humans– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
… to maintain ourselves in a state of vigilance by thinking on their excesses; and to learn how to recognize and so to destroy, by force of reason, the first seeds of tyranny and superstition, should they every dare to reappear amongst us.– Author(Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis of Condorcet)
We must never regard cultural diversity and unity as antithetical. Both variety and unity are necessary ingredients of any organized field-pattern. The problem is how to integrate a reasonable amount of diversity into a unity which is dynamic and flexible.– Author(Oliver L. Reiser)
Our experience of the Press, the radio and the television should warn us that what is said, even when true, can be truly judged only in relation to what is not said.– Author(George Patrick Meredith)
Indeed, the danger is that governments will pay too much attention to public opinion, now that they can so easily find out what it is, and use their information in order to stay in office as long as possible.– Author(Michael Dunlop Young)
The first step in regard to the subjects of pure reason, and which marks the infancy of that faculty, is dogmatic. The second, which we have just mentioned, is sceptical, and it gives evidence that our judgement has been improved by experience. But a third step, such as can be taken only by fully matured judgment, based on assured principles of proved universality, is now necessary, namely to subject to examination, not the facts of reason, but reason itself, … not the censorship but the criticism of reason, whereby not its present bounds but its determinate and necessary limits.– Author(Immanuel Kant)
Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance (naturaliter maiorennes), nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians– Author(Immanuel Kant)
The belief, not only of the socialists but also of those so-called Liberals who are diligently preparing the way for them, is that by due skill an ill-working humanity may be framed into well-working institutions. It is a delusion. The defective natures of citizens will show themselves in the bad acting of whatever social structure they are arranged into. There is no political alchemy by which you can get golden conduct out of leaden instincts.– Author(Herbert Spencer)
Interest groups (including many people who work for the state) have proved remarkably successful at hijacking government.– Author(John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge)
The One thing I Know with Absolute Certainty is that Absolute Certainty Does not Exist– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.– Author(Yogi Berra)
When you come to a fork in the road, take it– Author(Yogi Berra)
In the meantime, in Britain, there was some respite from foreign, but not from civil war. The cities destroyed by the enemy and abandoned remained in ruins; and the natives, who had escaped the enemy, now fought against each other. Nevertheless, the kings, priests, private men, and the nobility, still remembering the late calamities and slaughters, in some measure kept within bounds; but when these died, and another generation succeeded, which knew nothing of those times, and was only acquainted with the existing peaceable state of things, all [pg 042] the bonds of truth and justice were so entirely broken, that there was not only no trace of them remaining, but only very few persons seemed to retain any memory of them at all. To other crimes beyond description, which their own historian, Gildas,103 mournfully relates, they added this—that they never preached the faith to the Saxons, or English, who dwelt amongst them. Nevertheless, the goodness of God did not forsake his people, whom he foreknew, but sent to the aforesaid nation much more worthy heralds of the truth, to bring it to the faith.– Author(Bede The Venerable)
“We need in this generation, as we have had them in the past, men of conscience, driven, even against their wills, certainly against their own interest, to take a stand for principles. Men not afraid of facing unpleasant facts, not afraid of being different in their views from other people, men who cannot rest so long as opportunities remain to work for the really great human objectives – peace, justice, honesty and decency between men.”– Author(James Ralph Darling)
If you are not asking yourself “What is the right question to ask?” then you are not asking the right question.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.– Author(Hannah Arendt)
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”– Author(Hannah Arendt)
And since government is essentially organized and institutionalized power, the current question “What is the end of Government?” does not make much sense either. The answer will be either question begging – to enable men to live together – or dangerously utopian- to promote happiness or to realize a classless society or nonpolitical ideal, which if tried out in earnest cannot but end in some kind of tyranny.– Author(Hannah Arendt)
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.– Author(George Orwell)
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.– Author(George Orwell)
For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics–a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage–surely that proves that you are in the right? And the more you are in the right, the more natural that everyone else should be bullied into thinking likewise.– Author(George Orwell)
The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions—racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war—which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action.– Author(George Orwell)
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.– Author(Elizabeth Taylor)
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.– Author(Winston Churchill)
There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as ‘moral indignation,’ which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.– Author(Erich Fromm)
I experience myself as “I” because I doubt, I protest, I rebel. Even if I submit and sense defeat, I experience myself as “I”—I, the defeated one. But if I am not aware of submitting or rebelling, if I am ruled by an anonymous authority, I lose the sense of self, I become a “one,” a part of the “It.” (https://epdf.pub/queue/the-sane-society-1955.html)– Author(Erich Fromm)
“Man’s life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose. If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man—for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life.– Author(Ayn Rand)
“No, you do not have to live as a man; it is an act of moral choice. But you cannot live as anything else—and the alternative is that state of living death which you now see within you and around you, the state of a thing unfit for existence, no longer human and less than animal, a thing that knows nothing but pain and drags itself through its span of years in the agony of unthinking self-destruction.– Author(Ayn Rand)
“
Accept, as your moral ideal, the task of becoming a man. “”Do not say that you’re afraid to trust your mind because you know so little. Are you safer in surrendering to mystics and discarding the little that you know? Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience—that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible—that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error. In place of your dream of an omniscient automaton, accept the fact that any knowledge man acquires is acquired by his own will and effort, and that that is his distinction in the universe, that is his nature, his morality, his glory.– Author(Ayn Rand)
”
(Priest to condemend man) He nodded. “Maybe. Still, if you don’t die soon, you’ll die one day. And then the same question will arise. How will you face that terrible, final hour?” I replied that I’d face it exactly as I was facing it now.– Author(Albert Camus)
Sincerity is the end and beginning of things; without sincerity there would be nothing. On this account, the superior man regards the attainment of sincerity as the most excellent thing.– Author(Confucius)
S297 Remark: At one time the administration of justice, which is concerned with the private interests of all members of the state, was in this way turned into an instrument of profit and tyranny, when the knowledge of the law was buried in pedantry and a foreign tongue, and knowledge of legal processes was similarly buried in involved formalities.– Author(Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)
No nation gains the power of judgment except it can pass judgment on itself. But to attain this great privilege takes a very long time.– Author(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Whoso shrinks from ideas ends by having nothing but sensations.– Author(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
It is said that vain self-praise stinks in the nostrils. That may be so; but for the kind of smell which comes from unjust blame by others the public has no nose at all.– Author(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Real obscurantism is not to hinder the spread of what is true, clear, and useful, but to bring into vogue what is false.– Author(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
That is true Symbolism, where the more particular represents the more general, not as a dream or shade, but as a vivid, instantaneous revelation of the Inscrutable.– Author(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Choice is always an option. The “Ends” NEVER justify the “means”. Rules, Consequentialism and Virtue are the causes for Fascism, Totalitarianism and other idiotologies and must be rejected in favour of communication, cooperation, trust, responsibility and accountability for the survival of humanity.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability.– Author(Ronald Aylmer Fisher)
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This is true Liberty when free born men Having to advise the public may speak free, Which he who can, and will, deserv’s high praise, Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace; What can be juster in a State then this?– Author(John Milton)
”
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister’d vertue, unexercis’d & unbreath’d, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortall garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat– Author(John Milton)
“
all good things must come to an end . And after souper gonnen they to ryse, 610 At ese wel, with hertes fresshe and glade, And wel was him that coude best devyse To lyken hir, or that hir laughen made. He song; she pleyde; he tolde tale of Wade. But at the laste, as every thing hath ende, 615 She took hir leve, and nedes wolde wende.) book 3 line 610– Author(Geoffrey Chaucer)
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All this mean I by Love, that my feeling Astonishes with its wondrous working So fiercely that when I on love do think I know not well whether I float or sink.– Author(Geoffrey Chaucer)
Why does a strange discordance break The ordered scheme’s fair harmony? Hath God decreed ‘twixt truth and truth There may such lasting warfare be, That truths, each severally plain, We strive to reconcile in vain? (SONG III. Truth’s Paradoxes.)– Author(Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius)
Mount and begone. The world awaits you.– Author(Mervyn Peake)
We Learn, therefore, in ways the variety of which is as great as the variety of our souls, and we draw the life-giving water of knowledge from an infinity of wells (Page 420 concluding reflections)– Author(Richard Burdon Haldane)
So I believe that dreams—day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain-machinery whizzing—are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young. I believe it.– Author(Lyman Frank Baum)
“A great misfortune has befallen me,” he told himself, “for hereafter I cannot tell people I am wise, since it is not the truth. The truth is that my boasted wisdom is all a sham, assumed by me to deceive people and make them defer to me. In truth, no living creature can know much more than his fellows, for one may know one thing, and another know another thing, so that wisdom is evenly scattered throughout the world. But—ah me!—what a terrible fate will now be mine. Even Cayke the Cookie Cook will soon discover that my knowledge is no greater than her own, for having bathed in the enchanted water of the Truth Pond, I can no longer deceive her or tell a lie.”– Author(Lyman Frank Baum)
It need not be doubted, but from such a master Thucydides was sufficiently qualified to have become a great demagogue, and of great authority with the people. But it seemeth he had no desire at all to meddle in the government: because in those days it was impossible for any man to give good and profitable counsel for the commonwealth, and not incur the displeasure of the people. For their opinion was such of their own power, and of the facility of achieving whatsoever action they undertook, that such men only swayed the assemblies, and were esteemed wise and good commonwealth’s men, as did put them upon the most dangerous and desperate enterprizes.– Author(William Molesworth)
To keep the matter in perspective, let me repeat what I said at the beginning of this essay: that in England the immediate enemies of truthfulness, and hence of freedom of thought, are the press lords, the film magnates, and the bureaucrats, but that on a long view the weakening of the desire for liberty among the intellectuals themselves is the most serious symptom of all– Author(George Orwell)
“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”– Author(Martin Luther King)
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others.”– Author(Martin Luther King)
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Once the aim of philosophy is brushed aside, once the resources of its natural growth are ignored, once a vain program of incompetent judgment is established, not only common sense but also its bias are in charge, and they are there to stay. Distinct philosophies emerge for the changing tastes and fashions of racial, economic, regional, national, cultural, religious, and antireligious groups and even subgroups. Spice and originality are added by the special brands of common sense peculiar to psychoneurotics, assertive egoists, and aspiring romanticists. And if human society tires of muddling through one crisis into another, then there arises the temptation that the only means to attain an effective community of norms and directives is to put the educational system, the press, the stage, the radio, and the churches under the supervision of a paternal government, to call upon social engineers to channel thought and condition feeling, and to hold in reserve the implements that discipline refractory minds and tongues.– Author(Bernard Lonergan)
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Let’s hold off for a minute. I want to —Notice what I’m doing here! I’m exaggerating the tension of an inquiry. That’s because it’s so —We’ve been so well educated to suppress the tension of inquiry. It’s not fun! Actually it is fun!! But in a culture in which we are expected to come up with answers really quickly, and we don’t do it, because actually nobody comes up with all the answers quickly. But you can look like you come up with the answers quickly. In a culture like that, we learn to not pay attention to the tension of inquiry. And it’s so important for this process to learn how to pay attention to the tension of inquiry!– Author(Patrick Byrne)
Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes clarified his opposition and announced at a meeting that “ninety-five out of one hundred Australians rejected the very idea of equality.”[7] ……. Makino Nobuaki, the career diplomat who headed the Japanese delegation, then announced at a press conference: “We are not too proud to fight but we are too proud to accept a place of admitted inferiority in dealing with one or more of the associated nations. We want nothing but simple justice.– Author()
Questions are the mortal enemy of certainty– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
There is an urgent need to-day, for the citizens of a democracy to think well. It is not enough to have freedom of the Press and parliamentary institutions. Our difficulties are due partly to our own stupidity, partly to the exploitation of that stupidity, and partly to our own prejudices and personal desires.– Author(Lizzie Susan Stebbing)
NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!’– Author(Charles Dickens)
If you think you know the answer – you have not asked the right questions– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
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Out, damned spot! out, I say!–One: two: why, then, ’tis time to do’t.–Hell is murky!–Fie, my 40 lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?–Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.– Author(William Shakespeare)
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if you think you know the right questions – you don’t understand what a question is– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask… for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.– Author(Albert Einstein)
It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.– Author(Albert Einstein)
We are abroad in a world that is thoroughly constituted through reflexively applied knowledge, but where at the same time we can never be sure that any given element of that knowledge will not be revised.– Author(Anthony Giddens)
What we commonly call Nihilism…. Is actually adanger inherent in the thinking activity itself…. Nihilism is the other side of conventionalism, its creed consists of negations of the current so-called positive values, to which it remains bound…. But the dangerdoes not arise of the Socratic convictionthat an unexamined life is not worth living, but, on the contrary , out of the desire to find results that would make further thinking unnecessary.– Author(Hannah Arendt)
let us remember that this wisdom of life is the true salt of literature; that those books, at least in prose, are most nourishing which are most richly stored with it; and that it is one of the great objects, apart from the mere acquisition of knowledge, which men ought to seek in the reading of books.– Author(John Morley)
THE TEMPTATION of our day is accept the intolerable, for fear of still worse to come.– Author(Hermann Rauschning)
Wisdom, like other precious substances, must be torn from the bowels of the earth– Author(Michel Foucault)
The great obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge.– Author(Daniel J. Boorstin)
29. It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it, even with the best right, but without being OBLIGED to do so, proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life in itself already brings with it; not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience. Supposing such a one comes to grief, it is so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it, nor sympathize with it. And he cannot any longer go back! He cannot even go back again to the sympathy of men!– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
Men in the plural, that is, men in so far as they live and move and act in this world, can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and to themselves.– Author(Hannah Arendt)
Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live– Author(Hannah Arendt)
… can prevent the destruction of the common world,…This can happen under conditions of radical isolation, where nobody can any longer agree with anybody else, as is usually the case in tyrannies. But it may also happen under conditions of mass society or mass hysteria, where we see all people suddenly behave as though they were members of one family, each multiplying and prolonging the perspective of his neighbor.– Author(Hannah Arendt)
Human plurality, the basic condition of both action and speech, has the twofold character of equality and distinction. If men were not equal, they could neither understand each other and those who came before them nor plan for the future and foresee the needs of those who will come after them. If men were not dis- tinct, each human being distinguished from any other who is, was, or will ever be, they would need neither speech nor action to make themselves understood.– Author(Hannah Arendt)
..or to put it another way, whether the capacity for action does not harbor within itself certain potentialities which enable it to survive the disabilities of non-sovereignty.– Author(Hannah Arendt)
The action and reaction of Dogmatism and Scepticism is a constant phenomenon in the history of the higher thought of mankind, the thought into which the speculative element enters. If an uncritical Dogmatism is a monstrosity, a constructionless Criticism is an absurdity. The difference is that an uncritical Dogmatism may have an appearance of stability sufficient to deceive the ignorant and unwary, but mere empty Scepticism, which is the outcome of a constructionless Criticism, wears an air of unreality on its face and is adopted, for the most part, as a pose.– Author(E Belfort Bax)
In your, head They are fighting –in your head, in your head –zombies, zombies, zombies, zombies …– Author(Dolores O’ Riordan)
Developed Humans recognize the potential in themselves of the behavior they observe in others.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
The Constant Enemy Destroys Humanity– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things. Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy. From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides. It cannot be, when the root is neglected, that what should spring from it will be well ordered. It never has been the case that what was of great importance has been slightly cared for, and, at the same time, that what was of slight importance has been greatly cared for.– Author(Chinese Many)
The Master said, “To be fond of learning is to be near to knowledge. To practice with vigor is to be near to magnanimity. To possess the feeling of shame is to be near to energy. He who knows these three things knows how to cultivate his own character.– Author(Chinese Many)
It is said in the Book of Poetry, “I regard with pleasure your brilliant virtue, making no great display of itself in sounds and appearances.” The Master said, “Among the appliances to transform the people, sound and appearances are but trivial influences. It is said in another ode, ‘His Virtue is light as a hair.’ Still, a hair will admit of comparison as to its size. ‘The doings of the supreme Heaven have neither sound nor smell. ‘That is perfect virtue.”– Author(Chinese Many)
The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in one’s deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field. These are: (1) The Moral Law; (2) Heaven; (3) Earth; (4) The Commander; (5) Method and discipline.– Author(Chinese Many)
The revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the very principle of resentment becoming creative and giving birth to values—a resentment experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet of action, are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary revenge. While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says “no” from the very outset to what is “outside itself,” “different from itself,” and “not itself”: and this “no” is its creative deed.– Author(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
The doubts that Mr. Balfour expressed nearly thirty years ago, in an Address delivered in Glasgow, have not, so far, been answered. And it is probable that many people, to whom six years ago the notion of a sudden decline or break-up of our western civilisation, as a result not of cosmic forces but of its own development, would have appeared almost fantastic, will feel much less confident to-day, notwithstanding the fact that the leading nations of the world have instituted a league of peoples for the prevention of war, the measure to which so many high priests of Progress have looked forward as meaning a long stride forward on the road to Utopia.– Author(John Bagnell Bury)
The average brain is naturally lazy and tends to take the line of least resistance. The mental world of the ordinary man consists of beliefs which he has accepted without questioning and to which he is firmly attached; he is instinctively hostile to anything which would upset the established order of this familiar world. A new idea, inconsistent with some of the beliefs which he holds, means the necessity of rearranging his mind; and this process is laborious, requiring a painful expenditure of brain-energy. To him and his fellows, who form the vast majority, new ideas, and opinions which cast doubt on established beliefs and institutions, seem evil because they are disagreeable. The repugnance due to mere mental laziness is increased by a positive feeling of fear. The conservative instinct hardens into the conservative doctrine that the foundations of society are endangered by any alterations in the structure. It is only recently that men have been abandoning the belief that the welfare of a state depends on rigid stability and on the preservation of its traditions and institutions unchanged. Wherever that belief prevails, novel opinions are felt to be dangerous as well as annoying, and any one who asks inconvenient questions about the why and the wherefore of accepted principles is considered a pestilent person.– Author(John Bagnell Bury)
The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers– Author(Richard Wesley Hamming)
Teachers should prepare the student for the student’s future, not for the teacher’s past.– Author(Richard Wesley Hamming)
Personal freedom is a magnificent thing; by it and by it alone can a nation achieve its true freedom. Man must respect and honor his freedom in himself no less than in his neighbor or in the people at large.– Author(Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen)
The exploration for certain infinity motivates science, math and philosophy– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
There are two types of people – mobs and individuals and hypocrites. Most people cannot escape the binary embrace of initial-self reference and recursion.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
You can learn what people know by examining their work. You can learn what people don’t know by examine the work of others.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
“And when I speak of the other division of the intelligible, you will understand me to speak of that other sort of knowledge which reason herself attains by the power of dialectic, using the hypotheses not as first principles, but only as hypotheses –that is to say, as steps and points of departure into a world which is above hypotheses, in order that she may soar beyond them to the first principle of the whole; and clinging to this and then to that which depends on this, by successive steps she descends again without the aid of any sensible object, from ideas, through ideas, and in ideas she ends.”– Author(Plato)
The Question is NOT “Is there a continuum?”. The question is “Could Humanity exist without it?”– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
[161b]” but you do not understand what is going on: none of the arguments comes from me, but always from him who is talking with me. I myself know nothing, except just a little, enough to extract an argument from another man who is wise and to receive it fairly. And now I will try to extract this thought from Theaetetus, but not to say anything myself.”– Author(Plato)
“Only individuals have a sense of responsibility. –Nietzsche” (Einstein quoting Nietzsche)– Author(Albert Einstein)
“Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.”– Author(Hannah Arendt)
Be Sufficiently Vague– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
A way to value Humanity is NOT to “burn a candle”, Hold a vigil, Build a shrine or signal your virtue – INSTEAD treat the next person you meet the most humane way you can. And repeat.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
I still do not know what is more important – a good question or a good answer. What do you think?– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Of all the Causes which conspire to blind Man’s erring Judgment, and misguide the Mind, What the weak Head with strongest Byass rules, Is Pride, the never-failing Vice of Fools.– Author(Alexander Pope)
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Avoid Extreams; and shun the Fault of such, Who still are pleas’d too little, or too much. At ev’ry Trifle scorn to take Offence, That always shows Great Pride, or Little Sense; Those Heads as Stomachs are not sure the best Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest. Yet let not each gay Turn thy Rapture move, For Fools Admire, but Men of Sense Approve; As things seem large which we thro’ Mists descry, Dulness is ever apt to Magnify.– Author(Alexander Pope)
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You have your own lifetime to learn what you need to learn to become human– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Come on you bigots, feminists, drama queens, crusaders and mobthinkers – When you see injustice – do you speak up when it is a woman, black, migrant, jew,baby, white man, liberal party member or yourself? Do you have principles and know what they are?– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Justice is blind, Injustice is one-eyed– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
“I am Victim, Hear Me Roar, in numbers too big to ignore.. I am Strong, I am invincible, I am victim” – the Passive Aggressive Mob Victim Chant of our time– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
As far as I can tell – feminists, women on average and weak minded heroic men are driven by a psychopathic, narcissistic, constant anxiety and hysteria in fear of complexity, uncertainty, choice and responsibility. They are the Mob afraid of individual freedoms.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Feminists take Edmund Husserl’s ‘phenomenology’ ignoring Werner Karl Heisenberg’s ‘uncertainty’ and turn René Descarte’s “I Think therfore I Am” into “I feel therefore everything is as I declare it”– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Humans want you to learn. Your learning will help us all along the journey. It does not have to be popular – but if you do your best with responsibility and accountability to yourself and humans – justice will recognize and understand your efforts.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Surrounded by smug comfort of people who are the same as us – we no longer have to talk or explore – just grunt, nod and chant slogans. Learning, communication and other skills wither and die.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Virtue Signaling for designated victim groups is public display of masturbatory bigotry for mobs by underdeveloped tribal humans– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
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Here enter not vile bigots, hypocrites, Externally devoted apes, base snites, Puffed-up, wry-necked beasts, worse than the Huns, Or Ostrogoths, forerunners of baboons: Cursed snakes, dissembled varlets, seeming sancts, Slipshod caffards, beggars pretending wants, Fat chuffcats, smell-feast knockers, doltish gulls, Out-strouting cluster-fists, contentious bulls, Fomenters of divisions and debates, Elsewhere, not here, make sale of your deceits.– Author(François Rabelais)
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It is only when you realize that selective equality, as shrilled by feminists and other idiotologists, (“50/50 by 20/20” and 60% of the public service are women – up from 40%) you realize what corruption is and how binary certain smug virtue seeking mobs destroy humanity. See – Friedrich Nietzsche – Tarantulas.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible. … He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? … It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. “Reality control,” they called it; in Newspeak, “doublethink.”– Author(George Orwell)
As witnesses not of our intentions but of our conduct, we can be true or false, and the hypocrite’s crime is that he bears false witness against him-self. What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity o£ radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.– Author(Hannah Arendt)
Most of us are aware of and pretend to detest the barefaced instances of that hypocrisy by which men deceive others; but few of us are upon our guard or see that more fatal hypocrisy by which we deceive and over-reach our own hearts. It is a flattering an dangerous distemper, which has undone thousands – we bring the seeds of it along with us in the world they intensibly grow up with us from our childhood – the lye long concealed and undisturbed, and generally have such deep root in our natures by the time we come to years of understanding and reflection, that it requires all we have got to defend ourselves from their effects.– Author(Laurence Sterne)
Smith was wrong here. The most shining characteristic of Alroy Kear was his sincerity. No one can be a humbug for five-and-twenty years. Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practised at spare moments; it is a whole-time job. It needs also a cynical humour; although Roy laughed so much I never thought he had a very quick sense of humour, and I am quite sure that he was incapable of cynicism.– Author(W. Somerset Maugham)
Your Smug Certainty is only exceeded by your ignorance, incapacity, fear, hypocrisy, virtue and self interest– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
It is interesting to me that humans live in a time of great growth of comfortable living, information, discoveries – yet our knowledge, understanding, appreciation and tolerance continues to diminish.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Just in Time Philosophy. Wisdom increases by knowing why, when and which philosophies are important– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Be Sufficiently Certain– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make– Author(the Beatles)
The fundamental proposition which runs through the writings, which thus extend over twenty years, is, that the common a priori doctrines and methods of reasoning about political and social questions are essentially vicious; and that argumentation on this basis leads, with equal logical force, to two contradictory and extremely mischievous systems, the one that of Anarchaic Individualism, the other that of despotic or Regimental Socialism. Whether I am right or wrong, I am at least consistent in opposing both to the best of my ability. Mr. Booth’s system appears to me, and, as I have shown, is regarded by Socialists themselves, to be mere autocratic Socialism, masked by its theological exterior. That the “fantastic” religious skin will wear away, and the Socialistic reality it covers will show its real nature, is the expressed hope of one candid Socialist, and may be fairly conceived to be the unexpressed belief of the despotic leader of the new Trades Union, who has shown his zeal, if not his discretion, in championing Mr. Booth’s projects.– Author(Thomas Henry Huxley)
Truth, whether in or out of fashion, is the measure of knowledge and the business of the understanding ; whatsoever is besides that, however authorized by consent or recommended by rarity, is nothing but ignorance or something worse.– Author(John Locke)
In truth, O judges, while I wish to be adorned with every virtue, yet there is nothing which I can esteem more highly than the being and appearing grateful. For this one virtue is not only the greatest, but is also the parent of all the other virtues. What is filial affection, but a grateful inclination towards one’s parents?—who are good citizens, who are they who deserve well of their country both in war and at home, but they who recollect the kindness which they have received from their country?—who are pious men, who are men attentive to religious obligations, but they who with proper honours and with a grateful memory acquit themselves to the immortal gods of the gratitude which they owe to them?– Author(Marcus Tullius Cicero)
19 In the first place, I remark that the poets were not alone in sanctioning myths, for long before the poets the states and the lawgivers had sanctioned them as a useful expedient, since they had an insight into the natural affections of the reasoning animal; for man is eager to learn, and his fondness for tales is a prelude to this quality. It is fondness for tales, then, that induces children to give their attention to narratives and more and more to take part in them. The reason for this is that myth is a new language to them — a language that tells them, not of things as they are, but of a different set of things. And what is new is pleasing, and so is what one did not know before; and it is just this that makes men eager to p69 learn. But if you add thereto the marvellous and the portentous, you thereby increase the pleasure, and pleasure acts as a charm to incite to learning.– Author(Strabo)
Every day you get to choose to behave like a human – is a good day– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
For praise ought to be acceptable in high places only when opportunity is also sometimes given for reproach of things ill done.– Author(Ammianus Marcellinus)
And when the accused defended himself by denying the charge, and could not be confuted on any point, Delphidius, a very vigorous speaker, assailing him violently and, exasperated by the lack of proofs, cried: “Can anyone, most mighty Caesar, ever be found guilty, if it be enough to deny the charge?” And Julian was inspired at once to reply to him wisely: “Can anyone be proved innocent, if it be enough to have accused him?” And this was one of many like instances of humanity– Author(Julian the Apostate)
Now the aforesaid Barbatio was a somewhat boorish fellow, of arrogant intentions, who was hated by many for the reason that, while he commanded the household troops under Gallus Caesar, he was a perfidious traitor; and after Gallus’ death, puffed up with pride in his higher military rank, he made like plots against Julian, when he became Caesar; and to the disgust of all good men he chattered into the open ears of the Augustus many cruel accusations– Author(Ammianus Marcellinus)
If infinity exists then how many infinities do you have?– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Time to Wake Up Not Woke Up– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Tribal grunting signals and confirms shared beliefs, no matter how incoherent or unconnected to reality, as virtue and calls for tribal attacks on threats to those beliefs. Human writing since 3000 BCE recognizes this and tries to provide alternatives.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
I have a habit of nearly believing everything I think, say or write– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Hammering a nail does not make you an architect, having an opinion does not mean you are thinking– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Imagine a world where people only talked with people they liked, understood and agreed with– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
The Smug Virtue filled tyrant signals their binary certainty as “Virtuous” Good, Certainty, Wisdom, Perfection or Equality and then proceeds to cancel any exploration and debate– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
My working hypothesis is– Author(many)
what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence– Author(Christopher Hitchens)
Though this Word is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all. For, though all things come to pass in accordance with this Word, men seem as if they had no experience of them, when they make trial of words and deeds such as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its kind and showing how it is what it is. But other men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep.– Author(Heraclitus of Ephesus)
What opposes unites, and the finest attunement stems from things bearing in opposite directions, and all things come about by strife.– Author(Heraclitus of Ephesus)
The many do not take heed of such things as those they meet with, nor do they recognize them when they are taught, though they think they do– Author(Heraclitus of Ephesus)
When they are born, they wish to live and to meet with their dooms — or rather to rest — and they leave children behind them to meet with their dooms in turn.– Author(Heraclitus of Ephesus)
For even the best of them choose one thing above all others, immortal glory among mortals, while most of them are glutted like beasts.– Author(Heraclitus of Ephesus)
Men that love wisdom must be inquirers into very many things indeed.– Author(Heraclitus of Ephesus)
Let us not conjecture randomly about the most important things.– Author(Heraclitus of Ephesus)
Dogs bark at every one they do not recognize.– Author(Heraclitus of Ephesus)
I searched myself.– Author(Heraclitus of Ephesus)
Concerning the circumference of a circle the beginning and end are common.– Author(Heraclitus of Ephesus)
And we must remember that [Hitler and Mussolini’s] faithful followers, among them the diligent executors of inhuman orders, were not born torturers, were not (with a few exceptions) monsters: they were ordinary men. Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous; more dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.– Author(Primo Levi)
The only certain way to guarantee failure for all humans is to mandate a group choice strategy.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Australian Politics and Governments are run as Organized Crime Syndicates but with more corruption and less honour– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
The idea of language is not the same as the language of ideas– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
It is not a fact that some things are certain. It is a fact that some people believe in certain things.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
I am not sure what “humanity” is but I am certain it is something other than absolutely “tribal”.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
Not everyone who writes can think, Not everyone who thinks can write– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
What is the First Question. Why is the last.– Author(Jonathan Pearson)
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This Bible is built mainly out of the fragments of older Bibles that had their day and crumbled to ruin. So it noticeably lacks in originality, necessarily. Its three or four most imposing and impressive events all happened in earlier Bibles; all its best precepts and rules of conduct came also from those Bibles; there are only two new things in it: hell, for one, and that singular heaven I have told you about. What shall we do? If we believe, with these people, that their God invented these cruel things, we slander him; if we believe that these people invented them themselves, we slander them. It is an unpleasant dilemma in either case, for neither of these parties has done us any harm.– Author(Mark Twain)
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