Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
For it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.
[πεπαιδευμένου γάρ ἐστιν ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον τἀκριβὲς ἐπιζητεῖν καθ᾽ ἕκαστον γένος, ἐφ᾽ ὅσον ἡ τοῦ πράγματος φύσις ἐπιδέχεται: παραπλήσιον γὰρ φαίνεται μαθηματικοῦ τε πιθανολογοῦντος ἀποδέχεσθαι καὶ ῥητορικὸν ἀποδείξεις ἀπαιτεῖν.]
Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher
Nicomachean Ethics [Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια], Book 1, ch. 3 (1.3.4) / 1094b.24ff (c. 325 BC) [tr. Ross (1908)]
(Source)
Possibly the source of this spurious Aristotle quote. (Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:
For the man of education will seek exactness so far in each subject as the nature of the thing admits, it being plainly much the same absurdity to put up with a mathematician who tries to persuade instead of proving, and to demand strict demonstrative reasoning of a Rhetorician.
[tr. Chase (1847), ch. 1]
It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.
[Source (1852) - earliest version of this frequent translation I found.]
A man who has been well trained will not in any case look for more accuracy than the nature of the matter allows; for to expect exact demonstration from a rhetorician is as absurd as to accept from a mathematician a statement only probable.
[tr. Williams (1869)]
For an educated person will expect accuracy in each subject only so far as the nature of the subject allows; he might as well accept probable reasoning from a mathematician as require demonstrative proofs from a rhetorician.
[tr. Welldon (1892), ch. 2]
For it is the mark of an educated man to require, in each kind of inquiry, just so much exactness as the subject admits of: it is equally absurd to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician, and to demand scientific proof from an orator.
[tr. Peters (1893)]
For it is the mark of an educated mind to expect that amount of exactness in each kind which the nature of the particular subject admits. It is equally unreasonable to accept merely probable conclusions from a mathematician and to demand strict demonstration from an orator.
[tr. Rackham (1934)]
For it is characteristic of a well-educated person to look for the degree of exactness in each kind of investigation that the nature of the subject itself allows. For it is evident that accepting persuasive arguments from a mathematician is like demanding demonstrations from a rhetorician.
[tr. Reeve (1948)]
For a well-schooled man is one who searches for that degree of precision in each kind of study which the nature of the subject at hand admits: it is obviously just as foolish to accept arguments of probability from a mathematician as to demand strict demonstrations from an orator.
[tr. Ostwald (1962)]
For it is the mark of an educated man to seek as much precision in things of a given genus as their nature allows, for to accept persuasive arguments from a mathematician appears to be [as improper as] to demand demonstrations from a rhetorician.
[tr. Apostle (1975)]
For it is the mark of the trained mind never to expect more precision in the treatment of any subject than the nature of that subject permits; for demanding logical demonstrates from a teacher of rhetoric is clearly about as reasonable as accepting mere plausibility from a mathematician.
[tr. Thomson/Tredennick (1976)]
Since it is the mark of an educated person to look in each area for only that degree of accuracy that the nature of the subject permits. Accepting persuasive arguments from a mathematician is like demanding demonstrations from a rhetorician.
[tr. Crisp (2000)]
For it is the mark of an educated person to search for the same kind of clarity in each topic to the extent that the nature of the matter accepts it. For it is similar to expect a mathematician to speak persuasively or for an orator to furnish clear proofs!
[tr. @sentantiq (2018)]
For it belongs to an educated person to seek out precision in each genus to the extent that the nature of the matter allows: to accept persuasive speech from a skilled mathematician appears comparable to demanding demonstrations from a skilled rhetorician.
[tr. Bartlett/Collins (2011)]
Q. What are you against?
A. Narrow-mindedness. I’m against people taking the Bible absolutely literally, rather than letting some of it be real fantasy, like Jonah. You know, the whole story of David is a novel … Faith is best expressed in story.
Q. If the Bible is not literally true, does that mean we don’t need to take it seriously?
A. Oh no, you do, because it’s truth, not fact, and you have to take truth seriously even when it expands beyond the facts.Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007) American writer
“I Dare You,” Newsweek (interview) (7 May 2003)
Source article
It takes a lot of intellect to have faith, which is why so many people only have religiosity.
Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007) American writer
“I Dare You,” Newsweek (interview) (7 May 2003)
Source article
The difference between a Democracy and a Dictatorship is that in a Democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a Dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.
Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) German-American author, poet
Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and Tales of Ordinary Madness (1972)
(Source)
But a new danger appears in the excess of influence of the great man. His attractions warp us from our place. We have become underlings and intellectual suicides. Ah! yonder in the horizon is our help; — other great men, new qualities, counterweights and checks on each other. We cloy of the honey of each peculiar greatness. Every hero becomes a bore at last.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Uses of Great Men,” Representative Men Lecture 1, Boston (1845-12-11)
(Source)
Administrivia: Working on WIST
I’ve been making great strides toward getting the new version of WIST into shape. I made a breakthrough on the category listings — doing the author categories subsidiary to the alphabet-letter categories, etc. Slowly filling in the sidebar info. Things left to do (of substance) include:
1. Figure out what’s on the front page.
2. How the ~~Admin stuff will be displayed.
3. How the Miscellaneous and Sig Line archives will work.
I really want to get this finished, both because of the improvement it will provide to everyone and so that I can get back to entering stuff into it. 🙂
If books were sold as software and online recordings are, they would have this legalese up front:
The content of this book is distributed on an ‘as is’ basis, without warranty as to accuracy of content, quality of writing, punctuation, usefulness of the ideas presented, merchantability, correctness or readability of formulae, charts, and figures, or correspondence of (a) the table of contents with the actual contents, (2) page references in the index (if any) with the actual page numbering (if present), and (iii) any illustration with its adjacent caption. Illustrations may have been printed reversed or inverted, the publisher accepts no responsibility for orientation or chirality. Any resemblance of the author or his or her likeness or name to any person, living or dead, or their heirs or assigns, is coincidental; all references to people, places, or events have been or should have been fictionalized and may or may not have any factual basis, even if reported as factual. Similarities to existing works of art, literature, song, or television or movie scripts is pure happenstance. References have been chosen at random from our own catalog. Neither the author(s) nor the publisher shall have any liability whatever to any person, corporation, animal whether feral or domesticated, or other corporeal or incorporeal entity with respect to any loss, damage, misunderstanding, or death from choking with laughter or apoplexy at or due to, respectively, the contents; that is caused or is alleged to be caused by any party, whether directly or indirectly due to the information or lack of information that may or may not be found in this alleged work. No representation is made as to the correctness of the ISBN or date of publication as our typist isn’t good with numbers and errors of spelling and usage are attributable solely to bugs in the spelling and grammar checker in Microsoft Word. If sold without a cover, this book will be thinner than those sold with a cover. You do not own this book, but have acquired only a revocable non-exclusive license to read the material contained herein. You may not read it aloud to any third party. This disclaimer is a copyrighted work of Jef Raskin, first published in 2004, and is distributed ‘as is’, without warranty as to quality of humor, incisiveness of commentary, sharpness of taunt, or aptness of jibe.
Jef Raskin (1943-2005) American computer scientist, writer
“If Books Were Sold as Software,” NewsScan.com (18 Aug 2004)
(Source)
Administrivia: Doing the Numbers, 2/2007
To update the above, as of the Feb. 2007 upload of data, here are the current WIST stats:
How many of … | Feb-07 | Aug-03 | Feb-02 | Nov-00 |
Miscellaneous Quotations? | 475 | 457 | 446 | 400 |
Non-Miscellaneous Quotations? | 4,610 | 4,233 | 3,869 | 3,208 |
Total Quotations? | 5,085 | 4,690 | 4,315 | 3,608 |
Cited Authors? | 1,672 | 1,632 | 1,556 | 1,396 |
As noted in the News section, this update didn’t add a lot to the system (mostly sourcing clarifications), but it did add some.
As to the current “most popular”:
Who? | Rank | Count |
William Shakespeare | 1 | 98 |
C.S. Lewis | 2 | 61 |
Mark Twain | 3 | 54 |
Ralph Waldo Emerson | 4 | 51 |
Bill Watterson | 5 | 49 |
George Bernard Shaw | 6 | 44 |
Dave Barry | 7 | 39 |
Ambrose Bierce | 8 | 37 |
Abraham Lincoln | 9 | 36 |
G. K. Chesterton | 10 | 34 |
Alas, FastCounter is no longer functioning here. I have SiteMeter running, but no idea of the “since when” it’s counting. It shows, though a current total number of visits of 73,185. eXTReMe Tracking says the number of unique visitors since Aug. 2003 is 77,459. So I’ll take that number, and add it to the below tally to get:
September 2001: 8,400
Februrary 2002: 12,859
August 2003: 46,958
February 2007: 124,417.
Of those, 71% are from North America (14% from Europe, Finland making up half of that, interestingly), 81% use Windows, 61% are on IE (22% on FireFox), 60% get here from a search engine (half that from web sites, including cross-reference, the Atomz search, and web rings); Google has half the search pie there.
I’m resetting the Extreme search for its new version, so (for my future reference) it will be zeroed out at this point.
Administrivia: It’s alive! Alive!
After about three-plus years of (apparently) lying fallow, I’ve posted an update to the WIST data.
Why so long?
Well, aside from having a day job and eleventy-dozen other projects going on, WIST as it presently stands takes the better part of a day to fully upload. That means I don’t do it trivially. So I was waiting until I finished my next pass on the database, consisting of trying to source a lot more of the quotations. I’ve done a good job of that (and added a few besides), but had only gotten up to Robert E. Lee last check.
So I’ve not finished that sourcing, and there are some new quote authors I’ve not doubled back on for bio info, and I’m sure all sorts of other little glitches are in there. Consider it (as always) a work in progress, with recommendations or problems always welcome to be reported.
I really want to get this into an online database, for searching purposes as well as for ease of updating. Does anyone know of a good package that runs on Apache/MySQL that would do the trick?
At any rate, thanks for your patience and support.
Administrivia: Authors
The following are the folks who are currently quoted in WIST, along with a count of how many quotes there are for each.
(The links to the author names should eventually zero in to the first quote on the appropriate page, but for the moment only goes to the appropriate page itself.)
UPDATE: (17-Jul-07) This list as been removed, as there is now a whole page devoted to that (albeit without a quotation count).
When religion becomes a mere artificial façade to justify a social or economic system — when religion hands over its rites and language completely to the political propagandist, and when prayer becomes the vehicle for a purely secular ideological program, then religion does tend to become an opiate. It deadens the spirit enough to permit the substitution of a superficial fiction and mythology for the truth of life. And this brings about the alienation of the believer, so that his religious zeal becomes political fanaticism. His faith in God, while preserving its traditional formulas, becomes in fact faith in his own nation, class or race. His ethic ceases to be the law of God and love, and becomes the law of might-makes-right: established privilege justifies everything. God is the status quo.
You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that “as you reap, so you will sow” stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.
Bono (b. 1960) Irish musician, philanthropist [b. Paul David Hewson]
Interview by Michka Assayas, Christianity Today (8 Aug2005)
(Source)
The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) Russian novelist and moral philosopher
What Is Art?, ch. 14 (1896)
Quoted by Joseph Ford, Chaotic Dynamics and Fractals (1985) [ed. Barnsley and Demko] Alt. trans.: "I know that most men — not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems — can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty — conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives." [tr. Maude (1930)]
Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers.
William Penn (1644-1718) English writer, philosopher, politician, statesman
Fruits of Solitude #142 (1682)
Source text
BOB: The most terrifying day of your life is the day the first one is born.
CHARLOTTE: Nobody ever tells you that.
BOB: Your life, as you know it — is gone. Never to return. But they learn how to walk, and they learn how to talk — and you want to be with them. And they turn out to be the most delightful people you will ever meet in your life.Sophia Coppola (b. 1971) American actress, screenwriter, producer
Lost in Translation (2003)
Implicit in the term “national defense” is the notion of defending those values and ideas which set this Nation apart. … It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of … those liberties … which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile.
It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon the Bible, and that all who look upon the book as false or foolish are destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. Our Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but the sacredness of humanity. Ours is the first government made by the people and for the people. It is the only nation with which the gods have had nothing to do. And yet there are some judges dishonest and cowardly enough to solemnly decide that this is a Christian country, and that our free institutions are based upon the infamous laws of Jehovah.
For whatsoever some people boast of the antiquity of places and names, or of the pomp of their outward worship; others, of the reformation of their discipline; all, of the orthodoxy of their faith — for everyone is orthodox to himself — these things, and all others of this nature, are much rather marks of men striving for power and empire over one another than of the Church of Christ. Let anyone have never so true a claim to all these things, yet if he be destitute of charity, meekness, and good-will in general towards all mankind, even to those that are not Christians, he is certainly yet short of being a true Christian himself.
If any man err from the right way, it is his own misfortune, no injury to thee; nor therefore art thou to punish him in the things of this life because thou supposest he will be miserable in that which is to come. Nobody, therefore, in fine, neither single persons nor churches, nay, nor even commonwealths, have any just title to invade the civil rights and worldly goods of each other upon pretence of religion.
You will find that State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.
That’s stupid. And stupid is like kudzu. Once it gets a foothold, it just grows wild.
Leonard Pitts, Jr. (b. 1957) American commentator, journalist, novelist
Miami Herald, column (9 Apr. 2006)
Liberals treat judgment the way conservatives treat sex: forbid it, except when you’re doing it.
William Saletan (b. 1964) American political essayist
“My Secret Burden,” Slate (9 Mar 2006)
Full text.
We have gone a long way toward civilization and religious tolerance, and we have a good example in this country. Here the many Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church do not seek to destroy one another in physical violence just because they do not interpret every verse of the Bible in exactly the same way. Here we now have the freedom of all religions, and I hope that never again will we have a repetition of religious bigotry, as we have had in certain periods of our own history. There is no room for that kind of foolishness here.
People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution; they don’t put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.
Jamie Raskin (b. 1962) American constitutional scholar, politician
Maryland State Senate testimony (1 Mar 2006)
Baltmore Sun
People yearn for love … It is similar to a dog’s relationship to the car. First, they cry because they want to get in the car. Then, as soon as the car starts to move, they cry because they want to get out. And of course, as soon as they get out, all they want to do is get back in as soon as possible. Good thing for us, dogs aren’t especially musical or just imagine all the annoying songs there’d be about cars.
Merrill Markoe (b. 1948) American author, screenwriter, comedian
(Attributed)
My friends, each of you is a single cell in the great body of the State. And today, that great body has purged itself of parasites. We have triumphed over the unprincipled dissemination of facts. The thugs and wreckers have been cast out. And the poisonous weeds of disinformation have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Let each and every cell rejoice! For today we celebrate the first, glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directive! We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thought is a more powerful weapon than any fleet or army on Earth! We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death. And we will bury them with their own confusion! We shall prevail!
Someone at every game design company should have a full-time job of saying, “Why aren’t we letting the player decide that?” . . . When [designers] let . . . unnecessary limitations creep into a game, gamewrights reveal that they don’t yet understand their own art. They’ve chosen to work with the most liberating of media- and yet they snatch back with their left hand the freedom they offered us with their right. Remember, gamewrights, the power and beauty of the art of gamemaking is that you and the player collaborate to create the final story. Every freedom that you can give to the player is an artistic victory. And every needless boundary in your game should feel to you like failure.
Who cares if the early bird gets the worm? I’ll take cinnamon toast and coffee served by a handsome man at noon.
Kathy Shaskan (contemp.) American cartoonist
Blossom Fuller
The trouble with trouble is it starts out with fun.
Naomi Judd (b. 1946) American singer, songwriter [b. Diana Ellen Judd]
(Attributed)
Why did we wait for any thing? — why not seize the pleasure at once? — How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!
Jane Austen (1775-1817) English novelist
Emma, Vol. 2, ch. 12 (ch. 30) [Frank Churchill] (1816)
(Source)
A person who says, “I’m enlightened,” probably isn’t.
Ram Dass (1931-2019) American spiritual teacher, psychologist [b. Richard Alpert]
(Attributed)