Showing posts with label Quotes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quotes. Show all posts
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Fichte on Education
"Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished."
Monday, August 2, 2010
Bertrand Russell Quotes
Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.
Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.
Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.
In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.
Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.
In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Max Planck Quote
As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Thomas Szasz Quote
The struggle for definition is veritably the struggle for life itself. In the typical Western two men fight desperately for the possession of a gun that has been thrown to the ground: whoever reaches the weapon first shoots and lives; his adversary is shot and dies. In ordinary life, the struggle is not for guns but for words; whoever first defines the situation is the victor; his adversary, the victim. For example, in the family, husband and wife, mother and child do not get along; who defines whom as troublesome or mentally sick?...[the one] who first seizes the word imposes reality on the other; [the one] who defines thus dominates and lives; and [the one] who is defined is subjugated and may be killed.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Lord Acton Quotes
And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.
Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.
Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought.
Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality.
Socialism means slavery.
The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.
Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought.
Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality.
Socialism means slavery.
The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Quotes of the Day!
A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business. - Henry Ford
You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do. - Henry Ford
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. - Henry Ford
The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. - Josiah Stamp
The trouble with being educated is that it takes a long time; it uses up the better part of your life and when you are finished what you know is that you would have benefited more by going into banking. - Philip K. Dick
But if you want to continue to be slaves of the banks and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit. - Josiah Stamp
You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do. - Henry Ford
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. - Henry Ford
The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. - Josiah Stamp
The trouble with being educated is that it takes a long time; it uses up the better part of your life and when you are finished what you know is that you would have benefited more by going into banking. - Philip K. Dick
But if you want to continue to be slaves of the banks and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit. - Josiah Stamp
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Herodotus Quote
"For if anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably, after careful consideration of their relative merits, choose those of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best"
Histories page 187
Update - April 2010
I'm currently reading the Introduction to Allan Bloom's, "The Closing of the American Mind" and I came across the following passage which I thought would be worth including with this entry/blog I posted in 2008:
...if the students were really to learn something of the minds of any of these non-Western cultures—which they do not—they would find that each and every one of these cultures is ethnocentric. All of them think their way is the best way, and all others are inferior. Herodotus tells us that the Persians thought that they were the best, that those nations bordering on them were next best, that those nations bordering on the nations bordering on them were third best, and so on, their worth declining as the concentric circles were farther from the Persian center. This is the very definition of ethnocentrism. Something like this is as ubiquitous as the prohibition against incest between mother and son.
Only in the Western nations, i.e., those influenced by Greek philosophy, is there some willingness to doubt the identification of the good with one's own way. One should conclude from the study of non-Western cultures that not only to prefer one's own way but to believe it best, superior to all others, is primary and even natural—exactly the opposite of what is intended by requiring students to study these cultures. What we are really doing is applying a Western prejudice—which we covertly
take to indicate the superiority of our culture—and deforming the evidence of those other cultures to attest to its validity. The scientific study of other cultures is almost exclusively a Western phenomenon, and in its origin was obviously connected with the search for new and better ways, or at least for validation of the hope that our own culture really is the better way, a validation for which there is no felt need in other cultures.
If we are to learn from those cultures, we must wonder whether such scientific study is a good idea. Consistency would seem to require professors of openness to respect the ethnocentrism or closedness they find everywhere else. However, in attacking ethnocentrism, what they actually do is to assert unawares the superiority of their scientific understanding and the inferiority of the other cultures which do not recognize it at the same time that they reject all such claims to superiority.
Histories page 187
Update - April 2010
I'm currently reading the Introduction to Allan Bloom's, "The Closing of the American Mind" and I came across the following passage which I thought would be worth including with this entry/blog I posted in 2008:
...if the students were really to learn something of the minds of any of these non-Western cultures—which they do not—they would find that each and every one of these cultures is ethnocentric. All of them think their way is the best way, and all others are inferior. Herodotus tells us that the Persians thought that they were the best, that those nations bordering on them were next best, that those nations bordering on the nations bordering on them were third best, and so on, their worth declining as the concentric circles were farther from the Persian center. This is the very definition of ethnocentrism. Something like this is as ubiquitous as the prohibition against incest between mother and son.
Only in the Western nations, i.e., those influenced by Greek philosophy, is there some willingness to doubt the identification of the good with one's own way. One should conclude from the study of non-Western cultures that not only to prefer one's own way but to believe it best, superior to all others, is primary and even natural—exactly the opposite of what is intended by requiring students to study these cultures. What we are really doing is applying a Western prejudice—which we covertly
take to indicate the superiority of our culture—and deforming the evidence of those other cultures to attest to its validity. The scientific study of other cultures is almost exclusively a Western phenomenon, and in its origin was obviously connected with the search for new and better ways, or at least for validation of the hope that our own culture really is the better way, a validation for which there is no felt need in other cultures.
If we are to learn from those cultures, we must wonder whether such scientific study is a good idea. Consistency would seem to require professors of openness to respect the ethnocentrism or closedness they find everywhere else. However, in attacking ethnocentrism, what they actually do is to assert unawares the superiority of their scientific understanding and the inferiority of the other cultures which do not recognize it at the same time that they reject all such claims to superiority.
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