Objectivity

No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?

The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.

I like not to know for as long as possible because then it tells me the truth instead of me imposing the truth.

We must all beware the very real and understandable human tendency to ignore or subvert facts, and findings of science, that discomfort us for reasons of ideology, politics, religion, or personal taste.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry on as if nothing happened.

If a book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides if we choose.

We use patterns of behavior to guide us around life's potholes and minefields. We choose neighborhoods, friends, jobs and activities based on our own pattern of experience. Science tries to interpret the past, understand the present, and predict future events from a more rigorously catalogued and analyzed collection of patterns.

If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

Hear one side and you will be in the dark; hear both sides and all will be clear.

My best efforts were some modern things that looked like very lousy Matisses. Thank God I had the sense to realize they were lousy, and leave Paris.

No one seriously doubts Socrates' maxim: The unexamined life isn't worth living. Self-assessment and attempts at self-improvement are essential aspects of "the good life." Yes, we should engage in ruthless self-reflection and harsh scrutiny, but we should simultaneously acknowledge that such introspection will, at best, only result in a partial view of our minds at work. Complete objectivity is not an option.

Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny.

The historian should be fearless and incorruptible; a man of independence, loving frankness and truth; one who, as the poets says, calls a fig a fig and a spade a spade. He should yield to neither hatred nor affection, not should be unsparing and unpitying. He should be neither shy nor deprecating, but an impartial judge, giving each side all it deserves but no more. He should know in his writing no country and no city; he should bow to no authority and acknowledge no king. He should never consider what this or that man will think, but should state the facts as they really occurred.

It is the subjective world that rules the objective.  Change the subject, and the object is bound to change; purify youreslf, and the world is bound to be purified. 

Businessmen go down with their businesses because they like the old way so well they cannot change.

Learn to look with an equal eye upon all things, seeing the one Self in all.

A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.

Even though I had let them choose their own socks since babyhood, I was only beginning to learn to trust their adult judgment.. . . I had a sensation very much like the moment in an airplane when you realize that even if you stop holding the plane up by gripping the arms of your seat until your knuckles show white, the plane will stay up by itself. . . . To detach myself from my children . . . I had to achieve a condition which might be called loving objectivity.