A Few Favorite Quotations

"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education." --Thomas Jefferson

"Theories are logically constrained by facts, but are underdetermined by them: that is, while, to be acceptable, theories should be more or less plausibly coherent with facts, they can be neither conclusively refuted nor uniquely derived from statements of fact alone." --Mary Hesse

"Too much insistence cannot be laid upon the point that no one can be said to speak appropriately who has not considered not merely what it is expedient, but also what it is becoming to say. . . . these two considerations generally go hand in hand. . . . Sometimes, however, the two are at variance. Now, whenever this occurs, expedience must yield to the demands of what is becoming. . . . the end which the orator must keep in view is not persuasion, but speaking well, since there are occasions when to persuade would be a blot upon his honour." --Quintilian

"For Isocrates . . . rhetoric was the primary tool in education, and education was directed towards political activity and practicality. For Roman rhetoricians, above all Cicero, the link between rhetoric and the vita activa was fundamental. . . . When rhetoric became corrupted [people] opted out of the active life." --Brian Vickers

"All that is necessary for the forces of evil to prevail in the world is for enough good men to do nothing." --Edmund Burke

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." --Arthur Schopenhauer