These sayings are a collection developed over many years. Originally, there was no intent to make this a scholarly work and therefore, unfortunately, many references are lacking, incomplete, flat ol' wrong. Mea maxima culpa.
All contributions that strike me as part of my Weltanschauung are gratefully accepted.
D. E. (Steve) Stevenson
More Good Stuff from George Michael
Here's some great sayings by Winston Churchill
Come in and enjoy The Cynics Sanctuary. Ya gotta just love it.
Let's not forget skepticsm ...
Nicholas Russon's Quotations Archive
2013 - The Year of Retirement
The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false. Thomas Aquinas
True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment. James Russell Lowell
Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun. Don Marquis
Back in Business - 2012
"Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do," Potter Stewart
"By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth", George Carlin
"Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist", George Carlin
David Simon, the creator of the HBO series, "The Wire," captured some of that angst in an essay he wrote right after the election entitled "Barack Obama and The Death of Normal."
"America will soon belong to the men and women -- white and black and Latino and Asian, Christian and Jew and Muslim and atheist, gay and straight -- who can walk into a room and accept with real comfort the sensation that they are in a world of certain difference, that there are no real majorities, only pluralities and coalitions."
"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it," Albert Einstein
Well you can't teach the poetry, but you can teach the craft. David Hockney
"Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems." Bill Watterson
The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will. Vince Lombardi
"Without music, life would be a mistake," Friedrich Nietzsche
"If you are truly serious abut preparing your child for the future, don't teach him to subtract teach him to deduct," Fran Lebowitz
"Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom." Clifford Stoll
"Those who are enamoured of practice without science are like a pilot who goes into a ship without rudder or compass and never has any certainty of where he is going. Practice should always be based upon a sound knowledge of theory." Leonardo da Vinci
"Perfect is the enemy of good" Voltaire, La Bégueule
"Education is the transmission of civilization." Will Durant.
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet and Doctor Merryman. Jonathan Swift.
A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. Thomas Jefferson
Nothing is illegal if one hundred well-placed business men decide to do it. Andrew Young
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. Albert Einstein
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought. Bertrand Russell
Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities. Bertrand Russell
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russell
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. Bertrand Russell
I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along. Bertrand Russell
Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept. Bertrand Russell
He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast. Leonardo da Vinci
I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about. H. P. Lovecraft
In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have. -Lee Iacocca, automobile executive (b. 1924)
The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge. -Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, professor, attorney, and writer (1914-2004)
Inquiry is fatal to certainty. -Will Durant, historian (1885-1981)
I'm back in the saddle. Been
really sick - had a heart attack in April, 2008 and just had a hell of
a time getting back on my feet. But it's July and it's time to get on
with it!
Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is
by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own
merits. -Dan Barker, former preacher, musician (b. 1949) [Check A Word
A Day - wsmith@wordsmith.org. Great words and great quotes every day]
Silence is the severest criticism. -Charles Buxton, brewer, philanthropist, writer and politician (1823-1871)
"One should allow oneself to be led in the direction which the mathematics
suggests... one must follow up a mathematical idea and see what its
consequences are, even though one gets led to a domain which is completely
foreign to what one started with.... Mathematics can lead us in a direction
we would not take if we only followed up physical ideas by themselves."
[12] Ferris, T., The world treasury of physics, astronomy and mathematics,
Little, Brown and Co., 1991.
The quotation is in the article in this volume taken from `The second creation' by R.P. Crease and C.C. Mann (Macmillan, 1986).
Last modified: Mon, July 23, 2007 14:49