We cannot sow seeds with clenched fists. To sow we must open our hands.
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No source entered for Contribution #2831
To the scientists of the Renaissance, your critic was really your ally, helping you advance upon reality. Critics in science are not like drama critics, determining flops and successes. Criticism to scientists is just another means of finding out whether they're wrong, like running another experiment to see if it confirms or refutes a theory. Along with the advocacy principle of the courtroom, it is one of the best ways human beings have evolved to get closer to the truth.
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Source type: Book
Learned Optimism
Page 42
Published by Pocket Books
, New York
, 1990, 1998
http://
Contribution #2812
Let thoughts in and out without pouring concrete on them.
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No source entered for Contribution #2804
Differences challenge assumptions.
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No source entered for Contribution #2766
Science lets questions determine the answers; Ideology lets answers determine the questions.
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No source entered for Contribution #2723
Science means following the questions where they lead, even if you don’t like what the results are telling you.
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No source entered for Contribution #2722
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
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No source entered for Contribution #2641
You can learn a lot more from listening than you can from talking. Find someone with whom you don’t agree in the slightest and ask them to explain themselves at length. Then take a seat, shut your mouth, and don’t argue back. It’s physically impossible to listen with your mouth open.
We live comfortably in the patches of reality where theory is tolerably successful, where reason is functional and predictability predominates. But any day an unexpected event may expel us from this Eden into the larger world of the incomprehensible.
It is then that our attitude will sustain or sink us. If we can revel in the mystery, keeping faith in our sights, then we will thrive and grow stronger.
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Source type: Website
Josh Mitteldorf
"
Daily Inspiration 5 October 2008"
http://daily-inspiration.org/
Viewed on November 3, 2008
Contribution #2510
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
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No source entered for Contribution #2507
He that never changes his opinions, never corrects his mistakes, and will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.
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No source entered for Contribution #2504
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
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No source entered for Contribution #2502
I am comforted by life's stability, by earth's unchangeableness. What has seemed new and frightening assumes its place in the unfolding of knowledge. It is good to know our universe. What is new is only new to us.
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No source entered for Contribution #2498
You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.
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No source entered for Contribution #2497
Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.
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No source entered for Contribution #2496
You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing in.
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No source entered for Contribution #2484
The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
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No source entered for Contribution #2483
I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.
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No source entered for Contribution #2480
In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
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No source entered for Contribution #2476
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
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No source entered for Contribution #2471
I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.
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No source entered for Contribution #2448
I am simply in favor of intellectual hospitality--that is all. You come to me with a new idea. I invite you into the house. Let us see what you have. Let us talk it over. If I do not like your thought, I will bid it a polite "good day." If I do like it, I will say: "Sit down; stay with me, and become a part of the intellectual wealth of my world."
The only reason why we wish to exchange thoughts is that we are different. If we were all the same, we would die dumb. No thought would be expressed after we found that our thoughts were precisely alike. We differ--our thoughts are different. Therefore the commerse that we call conversation.
Every creed is a rock in running water: humanity sweeps by it. Every creed cries to the universe, "Halt!" A creed is the ignorant Past bulling the enlightened Present.
The combined wisdom and genius of all mankind cannot possibly conceive of an argument against liberty of thought.
To open deeply, as genuine spiritual life requires, we need tremendous courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit.
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Source type: Book
A Path with Heart
http://
Contribution #2215
And when we would make much of that which cannot matter much to thee, forgive us. --a frequent part of the prayer that opened sermons.
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.
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No source entered for Contribution #2112
A man who sees the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty,
has wasted thirty years of his life.
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No source entered for Contribution #2102
The intelligent and good man holds in his affections the good and true of every land--the boundaries of countries are not the limitations of his sympathies. Caring nothing for race, or color, he loves those who speak other languages and worship other gods. Between him and those who suffer, there is no impassable gulf. He salutes the world, and extends the hand of friendship to the human race. He does not bow before a provincial and patriotic god--one who protects his tribe or nation, and abhores the rest of mankind.
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Source type: Book
What's God Got to Do with It?
by Editor: Tim Page
Page 27
Published by Steerforth Press
, Hanover, New Hampshire
, 2005
http://
Contribution #2072
In the carriages of the past, you can't go anywhere.
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No source entered for Contribution #2036
Who is wise? One who learns from all.
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Source type: Sacred Text
Talmud
http://
Contribution #2030
The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.
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No source entered for Contribution #2023
Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.
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No source entered for Contribution #2009
Everything flows and nothing remains the same. You cannot step in the same river twice.
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No source entered for Contribution #1995
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
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No source entered for Contribution #1948
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.
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No source entered for Contribution #1945
It takes two to speak the truth--one to speak, and another to hear.
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No source entered for Contribution #1931
Guarding knowledge is not a good way to understand. Understanding means to throw away your knowledge. You have to be able to transcend your knowledge the way people climb a ladder.
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No source entered for Contribution #1863
The fundamental difference between the liberal and the illiberal outlook is that the former regards all questions as open to discussion and all opinions as open to a greater or lesser measure of doubt, while the latter holds in advance that certain opinions are absolutely unquestionable, and that no argument against them must be allowed be heard.
What is curious about this position is the belief that if impartial investigation were permitted it would lead men to the wrong conclusion, and that ignorance is, therfore, the only safeguard against terror. This point of view cannot be accepted by any man who wishes reason rather than prejudice to govern human action.
I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
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No source entered for Contribution #1720
You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken - unspeakable! - fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little mouse - a little tiny mouse! - of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.
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No source entered for Contribution #1719
Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful... Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race.
Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.
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Source type: Book
Essays on Education
http://
Contribution #1717
Feedback is the breakfast of champions.
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No source entered for Contribution #1643
Guarding knowledge is not a good way to understand. Understanding means to throw away your knowledge. You have to be able to transcend your knowledge the way people climb a ladder. If you are on the fifth step of a ladder and think that you are very high, there is no hope for you to climb to the sixth.
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Source type: Book
Being Peace
by Arnold Kotler
Page 58
Published by Parallax Press
, Berkeley, CA, USA
, 1996
http://
Contribution #1617
If you stop and confine yourself to one place, you will develop prejudices.
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Source type: Book
The Little Book of Chinese Proverbs
by Jonathan Clements
Page 183
Published by Barnes & Noble Books
, New York
, 2003
http://
Contribution #1607
Shade and light are different in every valley.
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Source type: Book
The Little Book of Chinese Proverbs
by Jonathan Clements
Page 165
Published by Barnes & Noble Books
, New York
, 2003
http://
Contribution #1602
What does openness look like in a person?
(0 responses)
