On this first day of June I look back at what I have read last month. Here it is – the May edition of selected philosophical quotes. April selection is available here. The goal stays the same: take my recent readings, select a bite-size amount of philosophical quotes that resonate with me, publish them here on humanfactor.blog
“What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done?”
(conan doyle through the voice of sherlock holmes, 1886)
“Admittedly, atoms are mostly empty space. By far the biggest component of your body is nothing. /…/ It has been estimated that if you took the entire human race and somehow removed all the space from their atoms (super-villains should take note – this isn`t physically possible) they would be compressed down to abut the size of a sugar cube.”
(clegg, 2019)
“However, it would also be a mistake to think that science works by making truly logical deductions. This is hardly ever possible in practice, because deduction requires perfect knowledge. /…/ Instead of deduction, though, most science works by induction. Where deduction produces a definitive proof by definition, induction works from the available evidence and says what is most likely.”
(clegg, 2019)
“As the old saying goes, absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.”
(clegg, 2019)
“We have no idea how consciousness works or how either simple life or complex life can begin. /…/ The universe would be boring if we knew everything – if there were no new intellectual frontiers to challenge us.”
(clegg, 2019)
“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you /…/ Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.'”
(nietzsche, 1882)
“Nevertheless, you cannot expect ground-breaking research from someone who is neither inspired nor encouraged to think freely /…/.”
(rönnegard, 2020)
“After all, if academia has a purpose, it comes down to the creation and dissemination of knowledge.”
(rönnegard, 2020)
“Indeed, free and imaginative inquiry, seemingly idle speculation, argument and spirited discourse, the play of the mind – these are so central to what we take to be part of a flourishing life that we pity or condemn societies and governments unwilling to permit or nurture such activities.”
(robinson, 1995)
“Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what he can do until he tries, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done.”
(collingwood, 1972)
“Where intellectual history is at issue /…/ such a history is comprised of words, and these, unlike swords and tanks and the exchange-rates of currency, are used differently at different times, often intending more than they convey.”
(robinson, 1995)
“The foundations are philosophical, and it is to these that we turn in search for origins.”
(robinson, 1995)
“All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
(pope; 1733)
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;
All Discord, Harmony, not understood;
All partial Evil, universal Good:
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason`s spite,
One truth is clear, ‘Whatever is, is Right.'”
keep exploring!
humanfactor 