Reasoning is compared to understanding as movement is to rest, or acquisition to possession.... Since movement always proceeds fro...m something immovable, and ends in something at rest, hence it is that human reasoning, in the order of inquiry and discovery, proceeds from certain things absolutely understood--namely, the first principles; and, again, in the order of judgment, returns by analysis to first principles, in the light of which it examines what it has found. Now it is clear that rest and movement are not to be referred to different powers, but to one and the same.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good h...as rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the history of human inquiry, philosophy has the place of the initial central sun, seminal and tumultuous; from time to time it... throws of some portion of itself to take station as a science, a planet, cool and well regulated, progressing steadily towards a distant final state.... Is it not possible that the next century may see the birth, through the joint efforts of philosophers, grammarians, and numerous other students of language, of a true and comprehensive science of language? Then we shall have rid ourselves of one more part of philosophy (there will still be plenty left) in the only way we ever can get rid of philosophy, by kicking it upstairs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In philosophical inquiry, the human spirit, imitating the movement of the stars, must follow a curve which brings it back to its p...oint of departure. To conclude is to close a circle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Wittgenstein imagined that the philosopher was like a therapist whose task was to put problems finally to rest, and to cure us of ...being bewitched by them. So we are told to stop, to shut off lines of inquiry, not to find things puzzling nor to seek explanations. This is intellectual suicide.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Burke and Adams had much in common. Adams read Burke's Philosophical Inquiry, for example, as part of his preparation for life and... a career. Burke--who had sympathized with the American Revolution--after all, the patriots were only seeking their rights as Englishmen--became the avowed enemy of the French Revolution. Adams for his part was not only a thinker, he was a doer: a daring patriot, diplomat, vice-president and president. Yet he never abandoned the life of the mind, as his discourse against the French Revolution attests. Burke and Adams had their similar views on events because they each saw man as disposed to selfishness, requiring public institutions to which civic allegiance is owed to restrain those ignoble instincts so that the virtuous side of people would have a chance to flourish. It was, oddly, an optimism based on a pessimistic estimate of human nature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
While we honour religion and believe it to be a powerful factor in elevating our race, we discriminate, as we hope our readers wil...l also do, between it and dogmatism. Dogmatism has been the bane of civilization and a curse to mankind. It has degraded our sex, stifled intelligent inquiry, and persecuted every independent reformer and every noble cause.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Helping children at a level of genuine intellectual inquiry takes imagination on the part of the adult. Even more, it takes the co...urage to become a resource in unfamiliar areas of knowledge and in ones for which one has no taste. But parents, no less than teachers, must respect a child's mind and not exploit it for their own vanity or ambition, or to soothe their own anxiety.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An inquiry about the attitude towards the release of so-called political prisoners. I should be very sorry to see the United State...s holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »