Quotes to ponder
To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.
Amos Bronson Alcolt
Aye, but isn't the man who chooses the bad in some way better than the man who has the good forced upon him?
Alex (A Clockwork Orange)
There's no such thing as a stupid question. But there are an awful lot of inquisitive idiots.....
Anonymous
It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!
Neitzsche
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
John Gardener
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
John Adams
Despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the antiquity of the earth, more than half of our neighbors believe that the entire cosmos was created six thousand years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue.
The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.
Sam Harris - Letter to a Christian Nation
and, from the past...
There was a young man who said "Damn!
I perceive with regret that I am
But a creature that moves
In predestinate grooves
I'm not even a bus, I'm a tram."
"Young man you should stay your complaint,
For the grooves that you call a constraint
Are there to contrive
That you learn to survive;
Trams arrive, buses may or they mayn't."
Maurice E. Hare (?) 1905