Infallible Quotes - Page 5

• Democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom. As such it is by no means infallible or certain. Nor must we forget that there has often been much more cultural and spiritual freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies and it is at least conceivable that under the government of a very homogeneous and doctrinaire majority democratic government might be as oppressive as the worst dictatorship.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Spiritual, Mean, Government

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• I know that the pope's infallible, but that doesn't mean he can't make mistakes.

  Stephen Colbert

  Mistake, Mean, Religion

  TV Series "The Colbert Report", 2005–2015.

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• The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist, and its power is employed above all to enforce this claim. It is modest only on this one point, however, because this officially nonexistent bureaucracy simultaneously attributes the crowning achievements of history to its own infallible leadership. Though its existence is everywhere in evidence, the bureaucracy must be invisible as a class. As a result, all social life becomes insane.

  Guy Debord

  Powerful, Class, Achievement

  Guy Debord (2014). “The Society of the Spectacle”, p.39, Bureau of Public Secrets

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• My theory stands as firm as a rock; every arrow directed against it will return quickly to its archer. How do I know this? Because I have studied it from all sides for many years; because I have examined all objections which have ever been made against the infinite numbers; and above all because I have followed its roots, so to speak, to the first infallible cause of all created things.

  Georg Cantor

  Archer, Years, Roots

  "Journey Through Genius". Book by William Dunham, 1990.

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• Government is not infallible. Government is only an executive control, a centralized authority for the purpose of expressing the will of the people; before you have a government you must have the people. Without the people there can be no government. The government must be, therefore, an expression of the will of the people.

  Marcus Garvey

  Government, Expression, People

  Marcus Garvey (1923). “Philosophy and opinions: Edited by Amy Jacques-Garvey”

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• I do believe that God's word is infallible, unchanging, perfect.

  John Shimkus

  Believe, Perfect, Unchanging

  "God will save us from climate change: U.S. Representative" by Cathal Kelly, www.thestar.com. November 10, 2010.

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• Grownups! Everyone remembers them. How strange and even sad it is that we never became what they were: beings noble, infallible, and free. We never became them. One of the things we discover as we live is that we never become anything different from what we are. We are no less ourselves at forty than we were at four, and because of this we know grownups as Grownups only once in life: during our own childhood. We never meet them in our lives again, and we will miss them always.

  Elizabeth Enright

  Childhood, Missing, Different

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• I like the idea of making films about ostensibly absolutely nothing. I like the irrelevant, the tangential, the sidebar excursion to nowhere that suddenly becomes revelatory. That's what all my movies are about. That and the idea that we're in possession of certainty, truth, infallible knowledge, when actually we're just a bunch of apes running around. My films are about people who think they're connected to something, although they're really not.

  Jean-Luc Godard

  Running, Thinking, Ideas

  "Predilections" by Mark Singer, The New Yorker, www.errolmorris.com. February 06, 1989.

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• He scratched his ear, the infallible resource to which embarrassed people have recourse.

  Lord Byron

  People, Ears, Embarrassment

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• An infallible way to make your child miserable is to satisfy all his demands.

  Henry Home, Lord Kames

  Children, Demand, Way

  Henry Home (lord Kames.) (1818). “Introduction to the art of thinking, to which is prefixed an original life of the author”, p.55

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• When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there is no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Two, Issues

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.198, Simon and Schuster

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• Science is only ‘one’ of the many instruments people invented to cope with their surroundings. It is not the only one, it is not infallible and it has become too powerful, too pushy and too dangerous to be left on its own.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Powerful, People, Surroundings

  Paul Feyerabend (1993). “Against Method”, p.160, Verso

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• There are those who ask what authority, what theological qualification, the Council intended to give to its teachings, knowing that it avoided issuing solemn dogmatic definitions backed by the Church's infallible teaching authority. The answer is known by those who remember the conciliar declaration of March 6, 1964, repeated on November 16, 1964. In view of the pastoral nature of the Council, it avoided proclaiming in an extraordinary manner any dogmata carrying the mark of infallibility.

  Pope Paul VI

  Teaching, Past, Views

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• Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection, there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sigh that you will recognize it.

  Simone Weil

  Single, Solitude, Affection

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.67, Psychology Press

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• Regardless of nationality, all men are brothers. God is "our Father who art in heaven." The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" is unconditional and inexorable. ... The lowly Nazarene taught us the doctrine of non-resistance, and so convinced was he of the soundness of that doctrine that he sealed his belief with death on the cross. ... When human law conflicts with Divine law, my duty is clear. Conscience, my infallible guide, impels me to tell you that prison, death, or both, are infinitely preferable to joining any branch of the Army.

  Ben Salmon

  Brother, Art, Father

  "Letter To President Wilson" by Ben Salmon, June 5, 1917.

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• As a man of the Congress, let me reaffirm my conviction that the collective wisdom of our two great legislative bodies while not infallible will in the end serve the people faithfully and very, very well.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Men, Two, People

  Gerald R. Ford's Address After Taking the Oath of Office as Vice President, www.nytimes.com. December 7, 1973.

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• You're only infallible about your own nervous system. You know what's going on in your own nervous system, whatever realities you're creating out of the infinite flux of being. You don't know anything about anybody else's reality unless they tell you about it. You gotta listen very sympathetically in order to understand them. So it's a limited infallibility.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Reality, Order, Creating

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• No infallible oracle out of the breast.

  Frederic Henry Hedge

  Oracles, Breasts, Conscience

  Frederic Henry Hedge (1866). “Reason in Religion”, p.205

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• A letter is a barrier, a reprieve, a charm against the world, an almost infallible method of acting at a distance.

  Iris Murdoch

  Distance, Acting, World

  Iris Murdoch (2003). “The Black Prince”, p.65, Penguin

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• Justice consists in seeing that no harm is done to men. Whenever a man cries inwardly: 'Why am I being hurt?' harm is being done to him. He is often mistaken when he tries to define the harm, and why and by whom it is being inflicted on him. But the cry itself is infallible.

  Simone Weil

  Hurt, Men, Compassion

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.30, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• the audience is the controlling factor in the actor's life. It is practically infallible, since there is no appeal from its verdict. It is a little like a supreme court composed of irresponsible minors.

  Agnes Repplier

  Actors, Littles, Theater

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• Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious dogma or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance they bring both science and religion into disrepute.

  Freeman Dyson

  Religious, Arrogance, Dogma

  Freeman J Dyson (2015). “Birds and Frogs: Selected Papers of Freeman Dyson, 1990–2014”, p.192, World Scientific Publishing Company

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• Besides the mathematical arts there is no infallible knowledge, except that it be borrowed from them.

  Robert Recorde

  Art, Mathematical, Borrowed

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• I have serious problems with fundamentalist Christians and their creationist theories. Although I believe that scripture is divinely inspired and infallible, I have a hard time going along with the belief that the whole creation process occurred in six twenty-four hour days. My skepticism is due, in part, to the fact that the Bible says that the sun wasn’t created until the fourth day of creation (Genesis 1:16-19). I have a hard time figuring how twenty-four hour days could have been measured before that.

  Tony Campolo

  Christian, Believe, Hard Times

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• Well, it [evolution] is a theory, it is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science and is not yet believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was believed. But if it was going to be taught in the schools, then I think that also the biblical theory of creation, which is not a theory but the biblical story of creation, should also be taught.

  Ronald Reagan

  School, Science, Biblical

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