Ideas, as the raw material from which knowledge is produced, exist in superabundance, but that makes the production of knowledge more difficult rather than easier. Many ideas- probably most- will have to be discarded somewhere in the process of producing authenticated knowledge. Authentication is as important as the raw information itself, and the manner and speed of the authentication process can be crucial...
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Nothing has an uglier look to us than reason, when it is not on our side.
Nothing has an uglier look to us than reason, when it is not on our side.
As for myself, I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal cause of every good and of every read more
As for myself, I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal cause of every good and of every evil which may befall me; therefore I have always found myself capable of being my own pupil, and ready to love my teacher.
It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the read more
It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.
The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.
The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.
When you want to organize knowledge. you will be careful to base the classification upon essential qualities. You will thus read more
When you want to organize knowledge. you will be careful to base the classification upon essential qualities. You will thus derive classes in which the members have the greatest amount of resemblance to one another and the greatest amount of difference from the members of other classes. But suppose that, instead of organizing knowledge, you set out to organize ignorance and prejudice. You will then do precisely the opposite...You will keep the classification vague and flexible, so that it can be made to include just whatever individuals you choose.
Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember. - Aenid.
Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember. - Aenid.
I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.
I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.
It is a juvenile notion that a society needs a lofty purpose and a shining vision to achieve much. Both read more
It is a juvenile notion that a society needs a lofty purpose and a shining vision to achieve much. Both in the marketplace and on the battlefield men who set their hearts on toys have often displayed unequal initiative and drive. And one must be ignorant of the creative process to look for a close correspondence between motive and achievement in the world of thought and imagination.
The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, read more
The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, by the ignorant mass- which is easily swayed once its imagination is caught- but by professionals with a vested interest in tradition and in the monopoly of learning. Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse. The academic backwoodsmen have been the curse of genius from Aristarchus to Darwin and Freud; they stretch, a solid and hostile phalanx of pedantic mediocrities, across the centuries.
