“statistics, a term which for most people is synonymous with ‘migraine.’”
William Watson in National Post Nov. 27, 2001
“I wonder why pundits describe certain politicians as ideology-free, since that’s not possible. Everyone has some view of the world.”
J. Budziszewski "Underground Thomist" Feb. 25, 2019
“An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and who manages to avoid them.”
Werner Heisenberg (of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle) quoted in Globe & Mail Feb. 1, 2002
“Soon we shall know everything the 18th century didn’t know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with us.”
Randall Jarrell, quoted on flyleaf of Neil Postman Building a Bridge to the 18th Century
“The things I like arguing about are absolute things; whether a proof is logical or whether a practice is just.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Dec. 17, 1927, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2008)
“one of the most remarkable things about the great philosophical books is that they ask the same sort of profound questions that children ask. The ability to retain the child’s view of the world, with at the same time a mature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremely rare – and a person who has these qualities is likely to be able to contribute something really important to our thinking. We are not required to think as children in order to understand existence. Children certainly do not, and cannot, understand it – if, indeed, anyone can. But we must be able to see as children see, to wonder as they wonder, to ask as they ask.”
Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren How to Read a Book
“Nothing can be clearer than that we require a story to explain to ourselves why we are here and what our future is to be, and many other things, including where authority resides.”
Neil Postman Building a Bridge to the 18th Century
“I refer to those who have fallen under the devilish spell of what is vaguely called ‘postmodernism,’ and in particular a subdivision of it sometimes called ‘deconstructionism.’… in this way of understanding things, language is under deep suspicion and is even thought to be delusional. Jean Baudrillard, a Frenchman, of all things, tells us that not only does language falsely represent reality, but there is no reality to represent. (Perhaps this explains, at long last, the indifferent French resistance to the German invasion of their country in World War II: They didn’t believe it was real.) In an earlier time, the idea that language is incapable of mapping reality would have been considered nonsense, if not a form of mental illness. In fact, it is a form of mental illness. Nonetheless, in our own time the ideas has become an organizing principle of prestigious academic departments. You can get a Ph.D. in this sort of thing.”
Neil Postman Building a Bridge to the 18th Century