Library, page 3

“After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.”

Richard Feynman · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.”

Richard Feynman · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”

Richard Feynman · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”

Richard Feynman · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“What I cannot create, I do not understand.”

Richard Feynman · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations.”

Daniel Kahneman · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“I will use a cumbersome abbreviation for it: WYSIATI, which stands for what you see is all there is.”

Daniel Kahneman · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“It is the consistency of the information that matters for a good story, not its completeness. Indeed, you will often find that knowing little makes it easier to fit everything you know into a coherent pattern.”

Daniel Kahneman · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“Confidence is a feeling, which reflects the coherence of the information and the cognitive ease of processing it.”

Daniel Kahneman · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“Amos and I coined the term planning fallacy to describe plans and forecasts that are unrealistically close to best-case scenarios.”

Daniel Kahneman · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.”

Daniel Kahneman · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Carl Sagan · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us.”

Carl Sagan · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

Carl Sagan · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

Carl Sagan · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“The cosmos is also within us. We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”

Carl Sagan · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking.”

Carl Sagan · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.”

Carl Sagan · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes — an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive, and the most ruthlessly skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new.”

Carl Sagan · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.”

Heraclitus · Presocratic

“This world-order, the same of all, no god nor man did create, but it ever was and is and will be: ever-living fire, kindling in measures and being quenched in measures.”

Heraclitus · Presocratic

“A person's character is their fate.”

Heraclitus · Presocratic

“It is necessary to say and to think that what is is; for being is, but nothing is not.”

Parmenides · Eleatic

“The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.”

Socrates · Socratic

“I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know.”

Socrates · Socratic

“Until philosophers rule as kings, or those now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophise, cities will have no rest from evils.”

Plato · Platonism

“Education is not what some people declare it to be, namely putting knowledge into souls that lack it, like putting sight into blind eyes.”

Plato · Platonism

“Imitations, if continued from youth far into life, settle down into habits and nature, in body, speech, and thought.”

Plato · Platonism

“We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”

Aristotle · Aristotelianism

“Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good.”

Aristotle · Aristotelianism

“It is the mark of an educated person to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits.”

Aristotle · Aristotelianism

“A human being is by nature a political animal.”

Aristotle · Aristotelianism

“The human good turns out to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.”

Aristotle · Aristotelianism

“The totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts.”

Aristotle · Aristotelianism

“Death is nothing to us. For what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.”

Epicurus · Epicureanism

“Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting-point of every choice and of every aversion.”

Epicurus · Epicureanism

“Of all the things wisdom acquires to produce the blessedness of the complete life, by far the greatest is the possession of friendship.”

Epicurus · Epicureanism

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.”

Cicero · Academic philosophy

“The safety of the people shall be the highest law.”

Cicero · Academic philosophy

“There are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us. We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

Seneca · Stoicism

“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.”

Seneca · Stoicism

“Fire tests gold; misfortune, brave men.”

Seneca · Stoicism

“Some things are up to us and some are not. Up to us are judgement, impulse, desire, aversion — in a word, whatever is our own doing. Not up to us are our body, our property, reputation, office — in a word, whatever is not our own doing.”

Epictetus · Stoicism

“Do not seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.”

Epictetus · Stoicism

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to externals.”

Epictetus · Stoicism

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

Marcus Aurelius · Stoicism

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they cannot tell good from evil.”

Marcus Aurelius · Stoicism

“Waste no more time arguing about what a good person should be. Be one.”

Marcus Aurelius · Stoicism

“People seek retreats for themselves, in the country, by the sea, in the hills. But this is altogether unphilosophical, when you can at any moment retreat into yourself.”

Marcus Aurelius · Stoicism

“The universe is transformation; life is opinion.”

Marcus Aurelius · Stoicism