Themes

"What is history, after all, but the record of the periodical crusades for or against some bogey which believing men have evolved out of their credulity and fear?"

"The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs."

"Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure."

"The most imaginative people are the most credulous, for them everything is possible."

"If I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery."

"[In] the unconscious, perfectly natural, irony of self-delusion, in all parts intelligible to the intelligent reader, without the slightest suspicion on the part of Autobiographer, I know of no equal in literature."

"Now, we have already demonstrated, that a falsehood can never be clearly conceived or apprehended to be true, because a falsehood is a mere non-entity; and whatsoever is clearly conceived or understood, is an entity. Nay, the true knowledge or science which exists nowhere but in the mind itself, has no other entity at all besides intelligibility ; and therefore, whatsoever is clearly intelligible."

"It has been one of my difficulties, in arguing this question out of doors with friends or strangers, that I rarely find any intelligible agreement as to the object of the war."

"[As a corollary of the new Atomic doctrine] ...the creation of a system of symbolic notation, which not only made the nature of chemical compounds and processes easily intelligible and easy of recollection, but, by its very form, suggested new lines of inquiry."

"Knowledge was not a problem for the ruling philosophy of the Middle Ages; that the whole world which man's mind seeks to understand is intelligible to it was explicitly taken for granted. That, people subsequently came to consider knowledge a problem implies that they had been led to accept certain different beliefs about the nature of man and about the things he tries to understand."

"Surely this voice meant our Teacher; for it is he that can collect the indications which lie scattered on all sides. A singular light kindles in his looks, when at length the high Rune lies before us, and he watches in our eyes whether the star has yet risen upon us, which is to make the Figure visible and intelligible."

"These are no doubt more methodical and complete, but are intelligible only after a little preliminary experience. The entire aim of these notes is to help the beginner acquire this preliminary experience a little faster."

"With a painter's temperament, all that's needed are the means of expression sufficient to be intelligible to the wide public."

"Space is not an empty homogeneous medium, but full of intricate differences, intelligible and real, though not with our common reality."

"Few are good for much; the conceits have not even the merit of being intelligible: it would perhaps be difficult to select three passages that we should care to read again."

"The paradoxes of wave and particle, it must make the world inside the atom and the wide spaces of the universe equally intelligible. It must have a different dimension from all previous world views, and include in itself an explanation of development and the origin of new things."

"To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties - this knowledge, this feeling that is the core of the religious sentiment."

"Thus then does the Doctrine of Knowledge, which in its substance is the realisation of the absolute Power of intelligising which has now been defined, end with the recognition of itself as a mere manifestation in a Doctrine of Wisdom, although indeed a necessary and indispensable means to such a Doctrine: a manifestation, the sole aim of which is, with the Knowledge thus acquired, — by which knowledge alone a Will, clear and intelligible to itself and reposing upon itself without wavering or perplexity, is possible, — to return wholly into Actual Life; — not into the Life of blind and irrational Instinct which we have laid bare in all its nothingness, but into the Divine Life which shall become visible to us."

"In philosophical terms, it is the thesis that anything that talk of objectivity can do to make our practices intelligible can be done equally well by talk of inter subjectivity. In political terms, it is the thesis that if we can just keep democracy and reciprocal tolerance alive, everything else can be settled by muddling through to some reasonable sort of compromise."

"One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name."

"The difficulty, as in all this work, is to find a notation which is both concise and intelligible to at least two people of whom one may be the author."

"I am an anarchist, a political and social w:HuguenotHuguenot; I deny everything and affirm naught but myself: because the sole truth of which I have material and moral proof and tangible, comprehensible and intelligible evidence, the only real, startling, non-arbitrary truth not susceptible to interpretation, is myself. I am. There I have a positive fact. Everything else is abstraction and, in mathematics, would be designated as "x", and unknown quantity; and I need not trouble myself with it."

"We see that pedantry has never been held in such esteem for the government of the world as in our times, and it offers as many paths of the true intelligible species and objects of infallible and sole truth as there are individual pedants."

"We have the duty of formulating, of summarizing, and of communicating our conclusions, in intelligible form, in recognition of the right of other free minds to utilize them in making their own decisions."

"For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible."

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of [hard-core pornography] material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

"Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice."

"It is said that the beauty and good of the soul consists in her similitude to the deity...Indeed, whatever is desirable is a kind of good, since to this desire tends. But they alone pursue true good, who rise to intelligible beauty, and so far only tend to good itself; as far as they lay aside the deformed vestments."

"Good design is making something intelligible and memorable. Great design is making something memorable and Meaningful."

"The object of pure physics is the unfolding of the laws of the intelligible world; the object of pure mathematics that of unfolding the laws of human intelligence."

"One out of the one Intelligible world; he is stationed in the middle of the Intelligible Powers, according to the strictest sense."

"For this reason I believe that the light of the Sun bears the same relation to things visible as Truth does to things intelligible."

"Missionaries, whether of philosophy or of religion, rarely make rapid way, unless their preachings fall in with the prepossessions of the multitude of shallow thinkers, or can be made to serve as a stalking-horse for the promotion of the practical aims of the still larger multitude, who do not profess to think much, but are quite certain they want a great deal. Rousseau's writings are so admirably adapted to touch both these classes that the effect they produced, especially in France, is easily intelligible."

"If the potential of every number is in the monad, then the monad would be intelligible number in the strict sense, since it is not yet manifesting anything actual, but everything conceptually together in it."

"Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end."

"Even a god could not formulate a proposition on historical subjects like 2 x 2 = 4, for what is intelligible in history can be formulated only with reference to problems and conceptual constructions which themselves arise in the flux of historical..."

"Principles of Vision insists on the artist assuring himself that he distinctly sees what he attempts to represent. What he sees, and how he represents it, depend on other principles. To make even this principle of Vision thoroughly intelligible in its application to all forms of Literature and Art, it must be considered in connection with the two other principles sincerity and beauty, which are involved in all successful works."

"The first attempt at a response: there must have been a fall, a decline, and the road to salvation can only be the return of the sensible finite into the intelligible infinite."

"Scientific knowledge helps us mainly because it makes the wonder to which we are called by nature rather more intelligible; and also in that it gives our ever-heightened life new skills to avert what is damaging and to introduce what is useful."

"Those in the crossing must in the end know what is mistaken by all urging for intelligibility: that every thinking of being, all philosophy can never be confirmed by “facts”, i.e. beings Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy."

"The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other."

"There is a serious tendency toward capitalism among the well-to-do peasants. This tendency will become rampant if we in the slightest way neglect political work among the peasant during the co-operative movement and for a very long period and after."

"I find the selectivity of erotic love - the choice of this man or this woman - much more intelligible if liking the person is the origin of sexual interest, rather than the other way."

"That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise."

"If 'bounded by a surface' is the definition of body there cannot be an infinite body either intelligible or sensible. Nor can number taken in abstraction be infinite for number or that which has number in numerable. If then the numerable can be numbered, it would also be possible to go through the infinite."

"Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner."

"The sole and basic source of our strength is the solidarity of workers, peasants and the intelligentsia, the solidarity of the nation, the solidarity of people who seek to live in dignity, truth, and in harmony with their conscience."

"This is the common algebraical method, which is concise, simple, and perspicuous; and is sufficient for all useful purposes in practical mathematics. The method is clear and intelligible to all persons who know the first principles of algebra. The rudiments of algebra ought to be taught before geometry, because algebra may be applied to geometry in certain cases, and facilitates the study of it"

"If the French noblesse had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their chateaux would never have been burnt."

"That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic."