A monthly thread for posting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently (or had stored in your quotesfile for ages).
- Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.
- No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
-- The Onion, Millions and Millions Dead
Related: World Death Rate Holding Steady At 100 Percent
"Most haystacks do not even have a needle."
-- Lorenzo
- Alan Sokal (hat tip)
"You cannot understand what a person is saying unless you understand who they are arguing with."
-- Don Symons, quoted by Tooby and Cosmides.
-- Miss HT Psych
Believe me, breaking the bed is a bit more worrying when you're tied to it.
-- Alexander Pope
-- Voltaire
"If I were wrong, then one would have been enough."
Einstein's reported response to the pamphlet "One Hundred Authors Against Einstein."
-- Mark Jason Dominus
"It is therefore highly illogical to speak of 'verifying' (3.8 [the Bernoulli urn equation]) by performing experiments with the urn; that would be like trying to verify a boy's love for his dog by performing experiments on the dog." - E.T. Jaynes, Probability Theory
"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"
-- attributed to George Carlin
Sam Harris's reply to Karen Armstrong
Humans are social animals. Inducing shame and discomfort might be useful if the believer is isolated away from other believers and cannot rely on them for emotional support. If not, he or she will likely relieve their shame by seeking the company of fellow believers, reinforcing the affiliation with the believing group.
----John Holt, Learning All the Time
-- E.T. Jaynes, Probability Theory
"I once spent a whole day in thought, but it was not so valuable as a moment in study. I once stood on my tiptoes to look out into the distance, but it was not so effective as climbing up to a high place for a broader vista. Climbing to a height and waving your arm does not cause the arm's length to increase, but your wave can be seen farther away. Shouting downwind does not increase the tenseness of the sound, but it is heard more distinctly. A man who borrows a horse and carriage does not improve his feet, but he can extend his travels 1,000 li [~500km] A man who borrows a boat and paddles does not gain any new ability in water, but he can cut across rivers and seas. The gentleman by birth is not different from other men; he is just good at "borrowing" the use of external things."
-- Xunzi, An Exhortation to Learning (勸學) 4, translated by John Knoblock in "Xunzi: A Translation and study of the Complete Works"
"Do not ask permission to understand. Do not wait for the word of authority. Seize reason in your own hand. With your own teeth savor the fruit."
-"The Way of Analysis", Robert S. Strichartz
-- PeteWarden
-- William S Burroughs, Words of Advice for Young People
-- Tetragrammaton
-- Carl Sagan
What's wrong with identifying with sports teams
A very funny video comparing identifying with a team to assuming you were there in your favorite movies.
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first. —Mark Twain
-- Nazgulnarsil
-- Anon
-- Herbert Samuel
"The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted."
-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"I'd rather do what I want to do than what would give me the most happiness, even if I knew for a fact exactly what actions would lead to the latter."
Keith Lynch, rec.arts.sf.fandom, hhbk90$hu5$3@reader1.panix.com
"With my eyes I can see you. With your eyes I can see myself."
K. Bradford Brown
~ Bill James
Matter flows from place to place
And momentarily comes together to be you
Some people find that thought disturbing
I find the reality thrilling
—Richard Dawkins quoted in Our Place in the Cosmos
-- John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
The absence of alternatives clarifies your mind marvelously. —Kissinger
"Psychologists tell us everyone automatically gravitates toward that which is pleasurable and pulls away from that which is painful. For many people, thinking is painful." - Leil Lowndes, How to Talk to Anyone
(Given the context, perhaps a bit of a Dark Arts view.)
He thought he knew that there was no point in heading any further in that direction, and, as Socrates never tired of pointing out, thinking that you know when you don't is the main cause of philosophical paralysis.
-- Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. —Nietzsche
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes (via Pharyngula)
-- The Cure, "Where The Birds Always Sing"
--- Walt Whitman, "Song of Joys"
-The Book of Bantorra, Episode 12
-- Daniel Dennett
Interestingly, my memory of the quote was corrupted, until I retrieved it to post here; I thought he'd said "harshest efforts"; perhaps owing to contamination from the quote "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be".
"Wars do not end when they are won, but when those who want to fight to the death find their wish has been granted." - Spengler
-- Thomas Carlyle
-- Julian Barbour, The End of Time
- Joni Mitchell
-- G.K. Chesterton, quoted in Jonah Lehrer's How we decide
(In the section which discusses psychopaths and notes that the "rational" part of their brains appears to be undamaged: the human brain relies on the circuitry of emotion to form moral decisions, or at any rate that's what's broken in psychopaths.)
--- Mike Caro
We're here to devour each other alive.
Do not ask permission to understand. Do not wait for the word of authority. Seize reason in your own hand. With your own teeth savor the fruit.
-"The Way of Analysis", Robert S. Strichartz
Order of the Stick
"One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Supose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more ... (read more)
-- Octavio Paz, The labyrinth of Solitude
Italicized emphases mine. I really liked that phrase.