The most fruitful and natural exercise of our mind, in my opinion, is discussion. I find it sweeter than any other action of our l...ife.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion ...and publicity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple dev...elopment of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every reader of the French or German papers knows that not a day passes without producing some uneasy discussion of supposed socia...l decrepitude;Mfalling off of the birthrate;Mdecline of rural population;Mlowering of army standards;Mmultiplication of suicides;Mincrease of insanity or idiocy,--of cancer,--of tuberculosis;Msigns of nervous exhaustion,--of enfeebled vitality,--"habits" of alcoholism and drugs,--failure of eyesight in the young,--and so on, without end.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Opinions are formed in a process of open discussion and public debate, and where no opportunity for the forming of opinions exists..., there may be moods--moods of the masses and moods of individuals, the latter no less fickle and unreliable than the former--but no opinion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The discussion of the whole problem of technology ... has been strangely led astray through an all-too-exclusive concentration upo...n the service or disservice the machines render to men. The assumption here is that every tool and implement is primarily designed to make human life easier and human labor less painful.... But ... homo faber, the toolmaker, invented tools and equipment in order to erect a world, not ... to help the human life process. The question therefore is not so much whether we are the masters or the slaves of our machines, but whether machines still serve the world and its things, or if, on the contrary, they and the automatic motion of their processes have begun to rule and even destroy world and things.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our discussion will be adequate; if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of; for precision is not to be sought fo...r alike in all discussions, and more than in all the products of the crafts. Now fine and just actions, which political science investigates, exhibit much variety and fluctuation, so that they may be thought to exist only by convention, and not by nature. And goods also exhibit a similar fluctuation.... We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premises, to indicate the truth roughly and in outline.... In the same spirit, therefore, should each of our statements be received; for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits: it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician demonstrative proofs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You who were directionless, and thought it would solve everything if you found one, What do you make of this? Just because a ...thing is immortal Is that any reason to worship it? Death, after all, is immortal. But you have gone into your houses and shut the doors, meaning There can be no further discussion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and... to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the battle field.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »