Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2006-09-21 Sep 21, 2006Men of ideas vanish when freedom vanishes.~ Carl SandburgThe freedom to make and admit mistakes is at the core of the scientific process. If we are asked to forswear error, or worse, to say that error means fraud, then we cannot function as scientists.~ Robert PollackScience is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.~ Immanuel Kant Sep 20, 2006The censor’s sword pierces deeply into the heart of free expression.~ Earl WarrenBut once a culture develops sufficiently to become skeptical, the idea of censorship becomes less attractive. To suppress a book or a picture or a sculpture or a play or a film is a terrible act of aggression against the artist who created it. This is a miming of capital punishment; it destroys the life that has been emanated by a life.~ Rebecca WestThe artist and the censor differ in this wise: that the first is a decent mind in an indecent body and that the second is an indecent mind in a decent body.~ George Jean Nathan Sep 19, 2006Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.~ Ashley MontagueThere is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.~ Mark TwainEver since the beginning of modern science, the best minds have recognized that "the range of acknowledged ignorance will grow with the advance of science." Unfortunately, the popular effect of this scientific advance has been a belief, seemingly shared by many scientists, that the range of our ignorance is steadily diminishing and that we can therefore aim at more comprehensive and deliberate control of all human activities. It is for this reason that those intoxicated by the advance of knowledge so often become the enemies of freedom.~ Friedrich August von Hayek Sep 18, 2006“Painters and poets,” you say, “have always had an equal license in bold invention.” We know; we claim the liberty for ourselves and in turn we give it to others.~ HoraceIt is the freedom to blaspheme, to transgress, to move beyond the pale, that is at the heart of all intellectual, artistic and political endeavor. Far from censoring offensive speech, a vibrant and diverse society should encourage it. In any society that is not uniform, grey and homogeneous, there are bound to be clashes of viewpoints.~ Kenan MalikIt is the great parent of science & of virtue: and that a nation will be great in both, always in proportion as it is free.~ Thomas Jefferson Sep 15, 2006We all have a little weakness, which is very natural but rather misleading, for supposing that this epoch must be the end of the world because it will be the end of us. How future generations will get on without us is indeed, when we come to think of it, quite a puzzle. But I suppose they will get on somehow, and may possibly venture to revise our judgments as we have revised earlier judgments.~ Gilbert Keith ChestertonThe price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with, and even pay for, a good deal of rubbish.~ Justice Robert H. JacksonThe Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to egalitarians, to people obsessed with fairness, to American presidential candidates in the year 2000 -- to everyone who believes that wealth should be redistributed. And that message is clear and concise: Go to Hell.~ P. J. O'Rourke Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print