Inquiry Quotes - Page 14

• Time can take nothing from the BIBLE.  It is the living monitor.  Like the sun,  it is the same in its light and influence to man this day which it was years ago.  It can meet every present inquiry and console every present loss

  Richard Cecil

  Loss, Men, Years

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• The greater the interest involved in a truth the more careful, self-distrustful, and patient should be the inquiry.I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place, because, such as it is, it is better than nothing.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Self, Patient, Should

  Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Edward Stowe (1889). “Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe: Compiled from Her Letters and Journals”

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• The inquiry into Nature having thus been pursued nearly two thousand years theologically, we find by the middle of the sixteenth century some promising beginnings of a different method the method of inquiry into Nature scientifically the method which seeks not plausibilities but facts.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Years, Two, Different

  Andrew Dickson White (2012). “A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom: From Creation to the Victory of Scientific and Literary Methods”, p.40, Transaction Publishers

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• To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Evil, Spirit, Dogmatism

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Epigrams by Ambrose Bierce”, p.2, e-artnow

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• Only by being suspended aloft, by dangling my mind in the heavens and mingling my rare thought with the ethereal air, could I ever achieve strict scientific accuracy in my survey of the vast empyrean. Had I pursued my inquiries from down there on the ground, my data would be worthless. The earth, you see, pulls down the delicate essence of thought to its own gross level.

  Aristophanes

  Essence, Data, Air

  Aristophanes (1984). “Four Plays”, Plume

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• We say then, that Christianity is adapted to the intellect, because its spirit coincides with that of true philosophy; because it removes the incubus of sensuality and low vice; because of the place it gives to truth; because it demands free inquiry; because its mighty truths and systems are brought before the mind in the same way as the truths and systems of nature; because it solves higher problems than nature can; and because it is so communicated as to be adapted to every mind.

  Mark Hopkins

  Philosophy, Giving, Mind

  Mark Hopkins (1863). “Evidences of Christianity: Lectures Before the Lowell Institute, January 1844”, p.136

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• Nietzsche ... does not shy from conscious exaggeration and one-sided formulations of his thought, believing that in this way he can most clearly set in relief what in his vision and in his inquiry is different from the run-of-the-mill.

  Martin Heidegger

  Running, Believe, Vision

  Martin Heidegger (1979). “Nietzsche: The will to power as art”

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• Truth indeed is sacred; but, as Pilate said, "What is truth?" Show us the undoubted infallible criterion of absolute truth, and we will hold it as a sacred inviolable thing. But in the absence of that infallible criterion, we have all an equal right to grope about in our search of it, and no body and no school nor clique must be allowed to set up a standard of orthodoxy which shall bar the freedom of scientific inquiry.

  William Stanley Jevons

  School, Body, Sacred

  "The Theory of Political Economy". Book by William Stanley Jevons, 1871.

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• I protest against deference to any man, whether John Stuart Mill, or Adam Smith, or Aristotle, being allowed to check inquiry. Our science has become far too much a stagnant one, in which opinions rather than experience and reason are appealed to.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Men, Too Much, Opinion

  William Stanley Jevons (1970). “The Theory of Political Economy”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• The scientific picture of the world championed since the Enlightenment is not just wrong but massively wrong. Indeed entire fields of inquiry, especially in the human sciences, will need to be rethought from the ground up in terms of intelligent design.

  William A. Dembski

  Intelligent, Design, Enlightenment

  William A. Dembski (2002). “Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology”, p.224, InterVarsity Press

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• The way forward does not lie in amateur and comically timeless linguistic sociology which takes 'forms of life ' for granted (and this is what philosophy has been recently), but in the systematic study of forms of life which does not take them for granted at all. It hardly matters whether such an inquiry is called philosophy or sociology.

  Ernest Gellner

  Philosophy, Lying, Way Forward

  Director of the Center for the Study of Nationalism Ernest Gellner, Ernest Gellner (2004). “The Devil in Modern Philosophy”, p.33, Routledge

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• Looking at scientific inquiry, next paradigm will be based on very large datasets. Scientists are in the lead in handling very large datasets - Hubble telescope or Large Hadron Collider are massive datasets.

  David Willetts

  Telescopes, Next, Scientist

  Source: www.theguardian.com

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• THERE is scarcely any inquiry more curious, or, from its importance, more worthy of attention, than that which traces the causes which practically check the progress of wealth in different countries, and stop it, or make it proceed very slowly, while the power of production remains comparatively undiminished, or at least would furnish the means of a great and abundant increase of produce and population.

  Thomas Malthus

  Country, Mean, Progress

  "Principles of political economy considered with a view to their practical application". Book by Thomas Robert Malthus, Book II, Chapter I, "On the Progress of Wealth", Section I, p. 309, 1836.

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• As we have come to understand the psychology of evil, we have realized that such transformations of human character are not as rare as we would like to believe. Historical inquiry and behavioral science have demonstrated the "banality of evil" -- that is, under certain conditions and social pressures, ordinary people can commit acts that would otherwise be unthinkable.

  Philip Zimbardo

  Believe, Character, Evil

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• A science only advances with certainty, when the plan of inquiry and the object of our researches have been clearly defined; otherwise a small number of truths are loosely laid hold of, without their connexion being perceived, and numerous errors, without being enabled to detect their fallacy.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Numbers, Errors, Research

  Jean Baptiste Say, Charles Robert Prinsep (1857). “A Treatise on Political Economy; Or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth”, p.15

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• Every politician, every member of the clerical profession, ought to incur the reasonable suspicion of being an interested supporter of false doctrines, who becomes angry at opposition, and endeavors to cast an odium on free inquiry. Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.

  Thomas Cooper

  Truth, Religion, Doctrine

  Thomas Cooper (1829). “Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy ...”, p.375

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• At root what is needed for scientific inquiry is just receptivity to data, skill in reasoning, and yearning for truth. Admittedly, ingenuity can help too.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Data, Skills, Roots

  "The Web of Belief". Book by Willard Van Orman Quine, 1970.

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• Free inquiry entails recognition of civil liberties as integral to its pursuit, that is, a free press, freedom of communication, the right to organize opposition parties and to join voluntary associations, and freedom to cultivate and publish the fruits of scientific, philosophical, artistic, literary, moral and religious freedom.

  Paul Kurtz

  Religious, Party, Communication

  Paul Kurtz (1983). “In defense of secular humanism”, Prometheus Books

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• It can scarcely be denied that the fundamental phenomena which first led mankind into chemical inquiries are those of combustion.

  William Crookes

  Fundamentals, Firsts, Chemicals

  Society for Psychical Research (Great Britain), Society for Psychical Research (London, England), Henry Sidgwick, Balfour Stewart, Arthur James Balfour Balfour (Earl of) (1912). “Presidential Addresses to the Society for Psychical Research, 1882-1911”

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• It is by losing ourselves in inquiry, creation & craft that we become something. Civilization is a continual gift of spirit: inventions, discoveries, insight, art. We are citizens, as Socrates would have said, & we have it available as our own.

  Paul Goodman

  Art, Discovery, Civilization

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• The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or the wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.

  Francis Bacon

  Love, Sovereign, Belief

  'Essays' (1625) 'Of Truth'

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• Without wishing to damp the ardor of curiosity or influence the freedom of inquiry, I will hazard a prediction that, after the most industrious and impartial researchers, the longest liver of you all will find no principles, institutions or systems of education more fit in general to be transmitted to your posterity than those you have received from your ancestors.

  John Adams

  Voting, Curiosity, Wish

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• A system of philosophy, or metaphysics, is a union of a world view and a life view in one harmonious, complete, integral conception. In so far as any man strives to attain, by rational inquiry, a consistent and comprehensive view of life and reality, he is a metaphysician.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Philosophy, Reality, Men

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1922). “Man and the Cosmos - An introduction to Metaphysics.”

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• No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library; for who can see the wall crowded on every side by mighty volumes, the works of laborious meditations and accurate inquiry, now scarcely known but by the catalogue.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wall, Writing, Vanity

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1837). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.167

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• In every principle presented to us, our first inquiry should be, "Is it true?" "Does it emanate from God?" If he is its Author it can be sustained just as much as any other truth in natural philosophy; if false it should be opposed and exposed just as much as any other error.

  John Taylor

  Truth, Philosophy, Errors

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