Here a a few quotes I like for their relevance to the Drakes Bay saga.
ON SCIENCE:
Scientists, therefore, are responsible for their research, not only intellectually but also morally. ~Fritjof Capra, physicist and systems theorist, is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California.
… the great tragedy of Science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact… ~T.H.
Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact. ~H.L. Mencken, Minority Report: H.L. Mencken’s Notebook, 1956
The most exciting phrase to hear in science…is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny …’ ~ Isaac Asimov
The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he’s one who asks the right questions. ~Claude Lévi-Strauss, Le Cru et le cuit, 1964
Reason, Observation, and Experience – the Holy Trinity of Science. ~Robert G. Ingersoll
No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer. ~Thomas Browne
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking. ~Albert Einstein
Science is simply common sense at its best. ~Thomas Huxley
Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind. ~Marston Bates
Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed. ~Thomas Henry Huxley
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate. ~Henry J. Tillman
In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,” and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. ~Carl Sagan, 1987
My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, “So? Did you learn anything today?” But not my mother. “Izzy,” she would say, “did you ask a good question today?” That difference – asking good questions – made me become a scientist. ~Isidor Isaac Rabi
The improver of natural science absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties: blind faith the one unpardonable sin. ~Thomas Henry Huxley, Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews, 1871
ON THINKING:
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking. ~J.K. Galbraith
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. ~Friedrich Nietzsche
If you don’t control your mind, someone else will. ~John Allston
I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education. ~Wilson Mizner
Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt. ~Clarence Darrow
Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozled requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don’t practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us – and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along. ~Carl Sagan, The Fine Art of Baloney Detection
Those who stand for nothing fall for anything. ~Alexander Hamilton
Conformity is that jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth. ~John F. Kennedy
The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed. ~Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Critic, 1799
Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment. ~Seneca
If everyone is thinking alike then somebody isn’t thinking. ~George S. Patton
Be careful in your choice of hypnotists. ~Sidney Jourard
Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul. ~Robert Ingersoll, Individuality
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds.
~Bob Marley
They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions… but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 11, spoken by the character Atticus
I wanted you to see what real courage is….It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 11, spoken by the character Atticus
ON CHARACTER:
Character develops itself in the stream of life.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don’t know what to do.
John W. Holt, Jr.
Character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that’s right is to get by, and the only thing that’s wrong is to get caught.
J. C. Watts
Other Thoughts:
“I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.”
“Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence”
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
ON ANGER:
The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn’t angry enough. ~Bede Jarrett
Do not teach your children never to be angry; teach them how to be angry. ~Lyman Abbott
PARTING THOUGHTS:
You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life. ~Winston Churchill
The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error.
The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.
“If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies… It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.” – Albert Einstein
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