I wonder shall History ever pull off her periwig and cease to be court-ridden?
William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Henry Esmond (1852), first page of Book One.
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William Makepeace Thackeray
Category: Thought
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Eric Weinstein
People who love their children do not drill holes in their children’s life raft.
Eric Weinstein on the Modern Wisdom podcast.
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James Fenimore Cooper
The peculiar office of a demagogue is to advance his own interests, by affecting a deep devotion to the interests of the people. . . .
He who would be a courtier under a king, is almost certain to be a demagogue in a democracy.
James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat: Or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America (1838).
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Niels Bohr
An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field.
Niels Bohr, as quoted by Edward Teller, in “Dr. Edward Teller’s Magnificent Obsession” by Robert Coughlan, in LIFE magazine (September 6, 1954), p. 62.
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Richard Feynman
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
Richard Feynman, address “What is Science?,” presented at the fifteenth annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association, in New York City (1966), published in The Physics Teacher, volume 7, issue 6 (1969), p. 313-320.
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James Fenimore Cooper
Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition, and that of rights. Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery.
James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat: Or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America (1838).
Equality of rights is a peculiar feature of democracies. These rights are properly divided into civil and political, though even these definitions are not to be taken as absolute, or as literally exact.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
We boil at different degrees.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude (1870).
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James Fenimore Cooper
It is probable a true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts are the results of sudden impulses and accident, than of that reason of which we so much boast.
James Fenimore Cooper, The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea (1823), preface.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Fortune of the Republic (1878).
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Sir Samuel Garth
Ingratitude’s a weed in every clime,
Sir Samuel Garth, Epistle to the Earl of Godolphin, L.27.
It thrives too fast at first, but fades in time.