Category: Thought

Nothing . . . will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.

Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 6.

Although scientific and technical progress change the world before our very eyes, it is, in fact, based on a very narrow social foundation. The more significant scientific successes become, the sharper will be the contrast between those who achieve and exploit them and the rest of the world. Soviet rockets have reached Venus, while in the village where I live potatoes are still dug by hand.

Andrei Amalrik, Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?, 1970, p. 66.

Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.

Dr. Johnson, The Idler, No. 30 (November 11, 1758).

Why is it that people never change their mind — until they do?

Douglass North, as quoted by Mike Munger on EconTalk, “Munger on Slavery and Racism,” August 22, 2016.

Only humans can set aims and achieve them by their activities if they know the laws of nature and set up various processes based on them and organise them purposively.

Rein Vihalemm, “Chemistry as an Interesting Subject for the Philosophy of Science,” Estonian Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, Rein Vihalemm, ed., Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001, p. 192.

Every other sin hath some pleasure annexed to it, or will admit of an excuse; envy alone wants both. Other sins last but for awhile; the gut may be satisfied, anger remits, hatred hath an end, envy never ceaseth.

Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Part I, Section 2, member 3, subsection 7, Envy, Malice, Hatred, Causes (1621).

Image: Albrecht Dürer, Cain Killing Abel (1511), detail.

In principle, a self-organising system cannot be constructed, since its organisation and behaviour cannot be prescribed and created by an external source. It emerges autonomously in certain conditions (which cannot be prescribed either). The task of the researcher is to investigate in what kind of systems and under what kind of conditions self-organisation emerges.

Rein Vihalemm, “Chemistry as an Interesting Subject for the Philosophy of Science,” Estonian Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, Rein Vihalemm, ed., Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001, p. 195.

“The movements of a race horse afford a better model of improving exercise than those of the ox in a tread-mill.”

Simon Newcomb, Henry Burchard Fine, Florian Cajori et al. Report of the Committee [of Ten on Secondary School Studies Appointed at the Meeting of the National Educational Association July 9, 1892: With the Reports of the Conferences Arranged by this Committee and Held December 28-30, 1892]. p. 108.

Thou shalt prove how salt is the taste of another’s bread and how hard is the way up and down another man’s stairs.

Tu proverai sì come sa di sale
lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle
lo scendere e ‘l salir per l’altrui scale.

Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, Canto XVII, lines 58-60

“Man seeks his ends, not necessarily in that way which is absolutely the easiest, but in the easiest way he knows. As his knowledge increases he discovers ways of increasing his power which he did not before know; and so important is this knowledge that it has been more instrumental in enabling him to improve his condition than his labor has. Thus, our knowledge of the expansive power of steam has caused the labor spent in making engines to be almost infinitely more efficient than would have been the same amount of labor without that knowledge.”

Simon Newcomb, Principles of Political Economy, 1886, p. 27.