“It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.” Galileo Galilei
“Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.” Galileo Galilei
“There are those who reason well, but they are greatly outnumbered by those who reason badly.” Galileo Galilei
“Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so” Galileo Galilei
“Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes — I mean the universe — but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.” Galileo Galilei
“I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.” Galileo Galilei
“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” Galileo Galilei
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” Galileo Galilei
“We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.” Galileo Galilei
“The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advanced auction sale of stolen goods.” H.L. Mencken, On Politics, a posthumous collection of essays published in 1956
“Peace is that glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading” Thomas Jefferson
More than two centuries ago, Edmund Burke said: “Constitute government how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state.”
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” Plato
Often what we see today is kakistocracy, government by the worst element of a society. The term is based on the Greek word kakistos meaning “worst.” In America what we are seeing is what has been described with the recently coined word, “In-ep-toc’-ra-cy” – a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we might oft win,
By fearing to attempt. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, 1604
