'You acted unwisely,' I cried, 'as you see
By the outcome.' He calmly eyed me:
'When choosing the course of my action,' said he,
'I had not the outcome to guide me.'

—Ambrose Bierce

"'This must be X, because Y would have been a really dumb strategy' is an argument that often presupposes too much about people's ability to avoid really dumb strategies."
-Nate Silver, Twitter

"I always remember, [Hamming] would come into my office and try to solve a problem [...] I had a very big blackboard, and he’d start on one side, write down some integral, say, ‘I ain’t afraid of nothin’, and start working on it. So, now, when I start a big problem, I say, ‘I ain’t afraid of nothin’, and dive into it."

—Bruce MacLennan

“So convenient a thing to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.” ―Benjamin Franklin (Autobiography Ⅳ, 1791)

The most potent way to sacrifice your life has always been to do so one day at a time.

-- BoneyM, Divided Loyalties

“[T]he majority of men do not think in order to know the truth, but in order to assure themselves that the life which they lead, and which is agreeable and habitual to them, is the one which coincides with the truth.” ―Tolstoy (The Kingdom of God Is Within You, 1894)

“He who knows the truth is not equal to him who loves it, and he who loves it is not equal to him who delights in it.” ―Confucius (Analects Ⅵ.18)

"Failure is always for sale, even if you can't afford the price."

-Eliezer Yudkowsky, Planecrash, What The Truth Can Destroy

Treason doth never prosper; what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason.

-- John Harrington

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

-- Arthur C. Clarke

“The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.” —Thomas Macaulay (“Lord Bacon” 1837)

The nice thing about being a coward is that once you notice you can just stop.

- Eliezer Yudkowsky, lintamande, Planecrash, the woman of irori

“[A]n aim of philosophy is patiently and unremittingly to sustain the vigilance of reason in the presence of failure and in the presence of that which seems alien to it.” ―Karl Jaspers (Way to Wisdom, 1950)

A man who is always asking 'Is what I do worth while?' and 'Am I the right person to do it?' will always be ineffective himself and a discouragement to others.

-- G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.

-- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, demonstrating the Virtue of The Void

• “[I]t is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies & to end as superstitions.” [T.H. Huxley, The Coming of Age of the Origin of Species 1880]

The ideas of the Cavern are the Ideas of every Man in particular; we every one of us have our own particular Den, which refracts and corrupts the Light of Nature, because of the differences of Impressions as they happen in a Mind prejudiced or prepossessed.

Francis Bacon, Novum Organum Scientarum, Section II, Aphorism V