We knew a lot of things we could hardly understand. —Kenneth Fearing'




Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. . . .
—John Adams


Men have an all but incurable propensity to try to prejudge all the great questions which interest them by stamping their prejudices upon their language.
—James Fitzjames Stephen'



Men have an all but incurable propensity to try to prejudge all the great questions which interest them by stamping their prejudices upon their language.
—James Fitzjames Stephen'


. . . ideology . . . is an instrument of power; a defense mechanism against information; a pretext for eluding moral constraints in doing or approving evil with a clean conscience; and finally, a way of banning the criterion of experience, that is, of completely eliminating or indefinitely postponing the pragmatic criteria of success and failure.
—Jean-Francois Revell