Reason/s & Belief

Reading is the same way.

He’s trying to be a better man and to create (in a small way) a better world by the way he chooses what he reads.

And it was a moral statement, even if it was mostly a private one.

I would never argue that the power of story—and it’s a real power—comes without responsibility. But I would say that responsibility is both to the better world to which we aspire and also the broken, compromised one we live in now.

Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Dwight D. Eisenhower

It is this very conflict of spiritual and moral ideas which gives the free countries a great part of their strength. You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. On all sides they are guarded by masses of armed men, cannons, aeroplanes, fortifications, and the like — they boast and vaunt themselves before the world, yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts; words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home — all the more powerful because forbidden — terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind. Cannons, airplanes, they can manufacture in large quantities; but how are they to quell the natural promptings of human nature, which after all these centuries of trial and progress has inherited a whole armoury of potent and indestructible knowledge? Winston Churchill

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. Noam Chomsky

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. John Gilmore

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure way against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is freedom. The surest path to wisdom is liberal education. Alfred Whitney Griswold

Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings. Heinrich Heine

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost. Thomas Jefferson

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship. George Bernard Shaw

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship. George Bernard Shaw

Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. Long ago those who wrote our First Amendment charted a different course. They believed a society can be truly strong only when it is truly free. In the realm of expression they put their faith, for better or for worse, in the enlightened choice of the people, free from the interference of a policeman's intrusive thumb or a judge's heavy hand. So it is that the Constitution protects coarse expression as well as refined, and vulgarity no less than elegance. Potter Stewart

There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all. Oscar Wilde

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame. Oscar Wilde

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. Oscar Wilde

Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.

My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.

However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope.

It is not enough for me to wear dark sunglasses and a wig. The wheelchair gives me away.

The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order

Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory

Bodies like the earth are not made to move on curved orbits by a force called gravity; instead, they follow the nearest thing to a straight path in a curved space

The ultimate objective test of free will would seem to be: Can one predict the behavior of the organism? If one can, then it clearly doesn't have free will but is predetermined. On the other hand, if one cannot predict the behavior, one could take that as an operational definition that the organism has free will

If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist.

I have noticed that even people who claim everything is predetermined and that we can do nothing to change it look before they cross the road.

One cannot base one's conduct on the idea that everything is determined, because one does not know what has been determined. Instead, one has to adopt the effective theory that one has free will and that one is responsible for one's actions.

A society in which the individual feels responsible for his or her actions is more likely to work together and survive

If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason

a good scientific theory: it made definite predictions, which could be tested by observation, and possibly falsified.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.