Category: Thought

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.

Ambrose Bierce, The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. 8 (1911), § “Epigrams” (p. 369.).

Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.

Voltaire, Letter to Louise Dorothea of Meiningen, duchess of Saxe-Gotha Madame (January 30, 1762).

“There’s no free will,” says the philosopher; “To hang is most unjust.”

“There is no free will,” assents the officer; “We hang because we must.”

The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. 8 (1911), § “Epigrams,” p. 350.

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.

John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book IV, Ch. 7, sec. 11, 1689.

Scientific method consists in applying to those subjects which lie without the range of our immediate experience those same common-sense methods of reasoning which successful men of the world apply in judging of matters which concern their own interests.

Simon Newcomb, Principles of Political Economy, 1886, chapter III, “Of Scientific Method”

A common mistake is that the conclusions of the plain unlettered man differ from those of economists in being more immediately founded on observed facts and less on deduction. The truth is that the plain unlettered man is more prone to rely on deduction from unproved hypotheses than the economist is. All classes must equally use deduction, because it is only by this logical process that we form any conclusion about the future effect of any present cause. Drawing the conclusion that rain will follow a certain direction of the wind with certain appearances of the clouds is an act of logical deduction. The main point in which men’s logical methods differ lies in the care with which hypotheses are formed by induction from observed facts, and the readiness of men to test them. Now it is the plain man who is most prone to form hasty generalizations from insufficient facts, to consider the conclusions which he thence deduces as final, and to be blind to all facts which do not tally with his theory.

Simon Newcomb, Principles of Political Economy, 1886, p. 40.

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

Immanuel Kant, Metaphysics of Morals (1797).

What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it heaven.

Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion (1797), Michael Hamburger, translator.

The deceiver is really the fool.

Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798).

Freedom without the strength to support it and, if need be, defend it, would be a cruel delusion.

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