March 28, 2024, 07:56:17 am

News:

This site is now on a new server!


Thinking about Thinking

Started by Unbeliever, October 18, 2006, 03:44:11 pm

Previous topic - Next topic

Unbeliever

October 18, 2006, 03:44:11 pm Last Edit: March 28, 2011, 02:06:55 pm by Unbeliever
Quote DB::Thinking

Quote from: Bertrand RussellWhat a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires --desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way."


Quote from: Thomas S. SzaszClear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.


Quote from: Arthur SchopenhauerAs the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.


Quote from: Thomas AquinasIf a thing can be done adequately by means of one, it is superfluous to do it by means of several; for we observe that nature does not employ two instruments where one suffices.


Quote from: Carl SaganThe cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the supression of ideas.


Quote from: Henri PoincareTo doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.


Quote from: Sir Willian Lawrence Bragg, in [i]Beyond Reductionism[/i] by A. Koestler and J.R. Smithies (1958)The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.


Quote from: Luther BurbankIt is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean.


Quote from: Luther BurbankFor those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.


Quote from: Marcus Tullius CiceroHe only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.


Quote from: CiceroMen decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion, or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.


Quote from: CiceroI am not ashamed to confess I am ignorant of what I do not know


Quote from: Jerome Seymour Bruner, [i]The Process of Education[/i] (1960)The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion - these are the most valuable coin of the thinker at work.


Quote from: Arthur C. Clarke, [i]The Lost Worlds of 2001[/i] (1972)The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.


Quote from: Stephen Jay Gould, [i]Perspectives in Biological Medicine[/i] (1985)Facts do not "speak for themselves"; they are read in the light of a theory. Creative thought, in science as much as in the arts, is the motor of changing opinion.


Quote from: Charles Proteus SteinmetzThere are no foolish questions, and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions.


Quote from: Sir Henry Tizard, in [i]A Postscript to Science and Government[/i] by C.P. Snow (1962)The secret of science is to ask the right question, and it is the choice of problem more than anything else that marks the man of genius in the scientific world.


Quote from: Robert Jackson, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1941-1954)The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish.



Quote from: Marie Curie, quoted in [i]Madame Curie[/i] by Eve Curie (1939)Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested developement of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit.
Without doubt, those dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.


Quote from: Richard P. Feynman, [i]The Feynman Lectures on Physics[/i], Volume Two (1963)The whole question of imagination in science is often misunderstood by people in other disciplines. They try to test our imagination in the following way. They say, "Here is a picture of some people in a situation. What do you imagine will happen next?"  When we say, "I can't imagine," they may think we have a weak imagination. They overlook the fact that whatever we are allowed to imagine in science must be consistent with everything else we know; that the electric fields and the waves we talk about are not just some happy thoughts which we are free to make as we wish, but ideas which must be consistent with all the laws of physics we know. We can't allow ourselves to seriously imagine things which are obviously in contradiction to the laws of nature. And so our kind of imagination is quite a difficult game. One has to have the imagination to think of something that has never been seen before, never been heard before. At the same time the thoughts are restricted in a straightjacket, so to speak, limited by the conditions that come from our knowledge of the way nature really is. The problem of creating something which is new, but which is consistent with everything which has been seen before, is one of extreme difficulty.
"Some say God is living there [in space]. I was looking around very attentively, but I did not see anyone there. I did not detect either angels or gods....I don't believe in God. I believe in man - his strength, his possibilities, his reason."
Gherman Titov, Soviet cosmonaut, in The Seattle Daily Ti