Things Learned Along the Way (page 32)

There are two ways of forming an opinion. One is the scientific method; the other, the scholastic. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all-important, and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything, and facts are junked when they do not fit theory.

Robert Heinlein
1907?1988

Sometimes you have to change more than your mind.

Unknown

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it?s time to pause and reflect.

Mark Twain
1835?1910

The only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803?1882

One of the problems with being a writer is that all of your idiocies are still in print somewhere. I strongly support paper recycling.

P. J. O?Rourke
1947?

I think that people who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.

President Abraham Lincoln
1809?1865

When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.

Oscar Wilde
1854?1900

The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one?s opinion, but rather to know it.

André Maurois
1885?1967

Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.

Mohandas K. Gandhi
1869?1948

I have lived in the world just long enough to look carefully the second time into those things that I am most certain of the first time.

Josh Billings
1818?1885

It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.

T. H. Huxley
1825?1895

You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.

Samuel Johnson
1709?1784

A great many people mistake opinions for thoughts.

Herbert Victor Prochnow
1897?1998

Faced with the choice between changing one?s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

John Kenneth Galbraith
1908?

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

Søren Kierkegaard
1813?1855

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

Michel de Montaigne
1533?1592

A critic is one who leaves no turn unstoned.

George Bernard Shaw
1856?1950

I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it.

Voltaire
1694?1778

To have doubted one?s own principles is the mark of a civilized man.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
1809?1894

It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.

Voltaire
1694?1778

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won?t come in.

Alan Alda
1936?

What a man says drunk he has thought sober.

Flemish Proverb

The believer is happy; the doubter is wise.

Hungarian Proverb

Belief, like any other moving body, follows the path of least resistance.

Samuel Butler
1835?1902

He who establishes his argument by noise and command, shows that his reason is weak.

Michel de Montaigne
1533?1592

Dan-O

"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza."

- Dave Barry

DanTheMan

Courage, in the final analysis, is nothing but an affirmative answer to the shocks of existence. ~Kurt Goldstein

To live with fear and not be afraid is the final test of maturity. ~Edward Weeks

Things Learned Along the Way

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