Thought for Today

"If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead."

~~~~~ Gelett Burgess

Thought for Today

"The antiquity and general acceptance of an opinion is not assurance of its truth."

~~~~~ Pierre Bayle

Thought for Today

"I don't think that science is complete at all. We don't understand everything, and one can see, within science itself, there are many inconsistencies. We just have to accept that we don't understand."

~~~~~ Charles H. Townes

Thought for Today

"People who want to understand democracy should spend less time in the library with Aristotle and more time on the buses and in the subway."

~~~~~ Simeon Strunsky

Thought for Today

"The way I look at it is, cancer research is absolutely nonpartisan. Cancer is very democratic in the sense that it attacks people regardless of their race, their gender, their national background, or their political persuasions."

~~~~~ David H. Koch

Thought for Today

"If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead."

~~~~~ Gelett Burgess

Thought for Today

"It is pure illusion to think that an opinion that passes down from century to century, from generation to generation, may not be entirely false."

~~~~~ Pierre Bayle

Thought for Today

"It is the artist's function not to copy but to synthesise: to eliminate from that gross confusion of actuality which is his raw material whatever is accidental, idle, irrelevant, and select for perpetuation that only which is appropriate and immortal."

~~~~~ William Ernest Henley

Thought for Today

"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend."

~~~~~ Thomas Jefferson

Thought for Today

[Ed.: I posted this last year on Phyllis McGinley's birthday, but it's so great -- and so apropos -- that I'm posting it again.]

"When blithe to argument I come,
Though armed with facts, and merry,
May Providence protect me from
The fool as adversary,
Whose mind to him a kingdom is
Where reason lacks dominion,
Who calls conviction prejudice
And prejudice opinion."

~~~~~ Phyllis McGinley

Thought for Today

"Real men are sadly lacking in this world, for when they are put to the test they prove worthless."

~~~~~ Franz Liszt

Thought for Today

"When blithe to argument I come, Though armed with facts, and merry, May Providence protect me from The fool as adversary, Whose mind to him a kingdom is Where reason lacks dominion, Who calls conviction prejudice And prejudice opinion."

~~~~~ Phyllis McGinley

Thought for Today

"The Nobel is a ticket to one's own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it."

~~~~~ T. S. Eliot

(It appears that Obama is no exception.)

Thought for Today

"The Constitution is not a panacea for every blot upon the public welfare. Nor should this Court, ordained as a judicial body, be thought of as a general haven for reform movements."

~~~~~ John Marshall Harlan

Thought for Today

"I am not here concerned with intent, but with scientific standards, especially the ability to tell the difference between a fact, an opinion, a hypothesis, and a hole in the ground."

~~~~~ Serge Lang

Thought for Today

"When blithe to argument I come,
Though armed with facts, and merry,
May Providence protect me from
The fool as adversary,
Whose mind to him a kingdom is
Where reason lacks dominion,
Who calls conviction prejudice
And prejudice opinion."

~~~~~ Phyllis McGinley

Thought for Today

"What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean?"

~~~~~ Antonin Scalia

Thought for Today

"It is immoral from almost any point of view to refuse to defend yourself and others from very grave and terrible threats, even as there are limits to the means that can be used in such defense."

~~~~~ Herman Kahn

Thought for Today

"When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on."

~~~~~ Heinrich Heine

Thought for Today

"Surely the best way to meet the enemy is head on in the field and not wait till they plunder our very homes."

~~~~~ Oliver Goldsmith