(The fourth is due to Mick Tully, the fifth to David Armstrong.)
“Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.” — William Gladstone
“The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.” — Thomas Macaulay
From George Bernard Shaw’s “Maxims for Revolutionists,” 1903:
We are told that when Jehovah created the world he saw that it was good. What would he say now?
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
Mens sana in corpore sano is a foolish saying. The sound body is a product of the sound mind.
The reformer for whom the world is not good enough finds himself shoulder to shoulder with him that is not good enough for the world.
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.
In moments of progress the noble succeed, because things are going their way: in moments of decadence the base succeed for the same reason: hence the world is never without the exhilaration of contemporary success.
If you injure your neighbor, better not do it by halves.
Two starving men cannot be twice as hungry as one; but two rascals can be ten times as vicious as one.
Decadence can find agents only when it wears the mask of progress.
Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The cowardly, the insubordinate, and the envious share your objections.
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!
“The difference between America and England is that Americans think 100 years is a long time, while the English think 100 miles is a long way.” –Earle Hitchner
During an eclipse in 1919, Sir Arthur Eddington confirmed Albert Einstein’s prediction of the gravitational bending of light rays, upholding the general theory of relativity. That Christmas, Einstein wrote to his friend Heinrich Zangger in Zurich:
“With fame I become more and more stupid, which, of course, is a very common phenomenon. There is far too great a disproportion between what one is and what others think one is, or at least what they say they think one is. But one has to take it all with good humor.”
(From Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann, eds., Albert Einstein, the Human Side: New Glimpses From His Archives, 1979.)
“To convince any man against his will is hard, but to please him against his will is justly pronounced by Dryden to be above the reach of human abilities.” — Samuel Johnson
“Thou canst not joke an Enemy into a Friend; but thou may’st a Friend into an Enemy.” — Ben Franklin
“One can pay back the loan of gold, but one lies forever in debt to those who are kind.” — Marcus Aurelius
“As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.” — Benjamin Disraeli
“Climate is your personality; weather is your mood.” — J. Marshall Shepherd, past president, American Meteorological Society, quoted in Andrew Revkin and Lisa Mechaley, Weather: An Illustrated History, 2018
Written by Albert Einstein at the invitation of a German magazine, 1921:
What Artistic and Scientific Experience Have in Common
Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking, and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science. If what is seen and experienced is portrayed in the language of logic, we are engaged in science. If it is communicated through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind but are recognized intuitively as meaningful, then we are engaged in art. Common to both is the loving devotion to that which transcends personal concerns and volition.
(From Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann, eds., Albert Einstein, the Human Side: New Glimpses From His Archives, 1979.)