Category: Thought

This book raises issues that might not be apparent from the table of contents. 
It sketches some of the difficulties faced by our civilization — a civilization which might be perhaps described as aiming at humanness and reasonableness, at equality and freedom; a civilization which is still in its infancy, as it were, and which continues to grow in spite of the fact that it has been so often betrayed by so many of the intellectual leaders of mankind. It attempts to show that this civilization has not yet fully recovered from the shock of its birth — the transition from the tribal or “enclosed society,” with its submission to magical forces, to the “open society” which sets free the critical powers of man. It attempts to show that the shock of this transition is one of the factors that have made possible the rise of those reactionary movements which have tried, and still try, to overthrow civilization and to return to tribalism.

Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Introduction.

Every failure is a step to success. Every detection of what is false directs us towards what is true: every trial exhausts some tempting form of error. Not only so; but scarcely any attempt is entirely a failure; scarcely any theory, the result of steady thought, is altogether false; no tempting form of Error is without some latent charm derived from Truth.

William Whewell, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England, Lecture 7 (1852).

Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical.

Roger Bacon, as cited by Peter Nicholls The Encyclopedia of science fiction: an illustrated A to Z (1979), p. 376.

The tone in which an Englishman expresses anger would, in Italy, be only a mark of surprise.

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, as quoted in David Booth, The principles of English composition (1831), p. 8.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

Francis Bacon, “Of Studies,” Meditationes sacræ (1597).

La culture est un instrument manié par des professeurs pour fabriquer des professeurs qui à leur tour fabriqueront des professeurs.

Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors, who, when their turn comes, will manufacture professors.

Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, part 2: “Uprootedness,” chapter 1: “Uprootedness in the Towns” (1949).

Prudens quaestio dimidium scientiae.

To ask the proper question is half of knowing.

Roger Bacon, as cited in  LIFE (September 8, 1958), p. 73.

The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

Francis Bacon, Essex’s Device (1595).

The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged.

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, as quoted in Antoine Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry (trans. Robert Kerr, 1790), Preface, p. xiv.

It is not true that on an exchange of commodities we give value for value. On the contrary, each of the two contracting parties in every case, gives a less for a greater value. . . . If we really exchanged equal values, neither party could make a profit. And yet, they both gain, or ought to gain. Why? The value of a thing consists solely in its relation to our wants. What is more to the one is less to the other, and vice versa.

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Le Commerce et le Gouvernement (1776), as quoted in Karl Marx’s Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 5.