On Knowing and Ignorance

Quotations That Will Hopefully Make You Think

Over the years, I have fallen into the habit of copying extracts, from anything I read, which I find inspiring, interesting, or just plain old provocative. Here are some, on the nature of knowledge and ignorance and intolerance, that I found especially interesting, and which I hope will make you think.

Bertrand Russell

“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”

Carl Sagan

“The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true.”

Isaac Asimov

“When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”

John Kekes

“To use a crude but eloquent old saying, I can put up with someone pissing on my feet, but I find it intolerable to have him tell me that it is raining. We were continually pissed on, and we were not merely told that it was raining but were forced to sing in celebration of the rain.” (Background: This is a reference to his experience under Communist rule in Hungary)

Nassim Taleb

“The question is as follows: Would you agree to deny the freedom of speech to every political party that has in its charter the banning the freedom of speech? One step further, should a society that has elected to be tolerant be intolerant about intolerance?”

Robert Zubrin

“Science is not a collection of facts; it is a process of discovery. Science, alongside its sister, conscience, is based on the signature…individualist belief that there is a fundamental property of the human mind that, when presented with sufficient information, is able to distinguish right from wrong, justice from injustice, truth from untruth. Matters of science must therefore be determined by reason, not by force.” (Background: He is an aerospace engineer)

Raghuram Rajan

“Tolerance means not being so insecure about one’s ideas that one cannot subject them to challenge — it implies a degree of detachment that is absolutely necessary for mature debate. Finally, respect requires that in the rare case when an idea is tightly associated with a group’s core personality, we are extra careful about challenging it. Tolerance can take the offense out of debate, and indeed instil respect.” (Background: He is an economist)

Steven Strogatz

“For reasons nobody understands, the universe is deeply mathematical. Maybe God made it that way. Or maybe it’s the only way a universe with us in it could be, because nonmathematical universes can’t harbor life intelligent enough to ask the question. In any case, it’s a mysterious and marvelous fact that our universe obeys laws of nature that always turn out to be expressible in the language of calculus as sentences called differential equations…To put this awesome assertion another way, there seems to be something like a code to the universe, an operating system that animates everything from moment to moment and place to place. Calculus taps into this order and expresses it.” (Background: He is a mathematician)