Famous Quotes & Sayings

David Hume

To invent without scruple a new principle to every new phenomenon, instead of adapting it to the old; to overload our hypothesis with a variety of this kind, are certain proofs that none of these principles is the just one, and that we only desire, by a number of falsehoods, to cover our ignorance of the truth.

David Hume

Reason, in a strict sense, as meaning the judgment of truth and falsehood, can never, of itself, be any motive to the will, and can have no influence but so far as it touches some passion or affection. Abstract relations of ideas are the object of curiosity, not of volition. And matters of fact, where they are neither good nor evil, where they neither excite desire nor aversion, are totally indifferent, and whether known or unknown, whether mistaken or rightly apprehended, cannot be regarded as any motive to action.

David Hume

Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude.

David Duchovny

I'm not going to give up. I can't give up. Not as long as the truth is out there.

Audre Lorde

For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak it.

Antonin Artaud

I see in the act of throwing the dice and of risking the affirmation of some intuitively felt truth, however uncertain, my whole reason for living.

Denise Levertov

I learn to affirm Truth's light at strange turns of the mind's road, wrong turns that lead over the border into wonder....

Denis Waitley

The truth is, you don't break a bad habit; you replace it with a good one.

Al Gore

In a free society, there comes a time when the truth - however hard it may be to hear, however impolitic it may seem to say - must be told.

David Walliams

We sort of expect to see men in women's clothes. It's part of our culture. The key thing is, it has to be done quite badly.

David Riesman

Social Science … led us to the fallacy that, since all men have their being in culture and as a result of culture, they owe a debt to that culture which even a lifetime of altruism could not repay.

David Riesman

Drivers in a traffic jam, frustrated by each others presence, are not the most amiable of men.

David Riesman

Men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.

David Ricardo

I have endeavoured to show that the ability to pay taxes depends, not on the gross money value of the mass of commodities, nor on the net money value of the revenue of capitalists and landlords, but on the money value of each man's revenue compared to the money value of the commodities which he usually consumes.

David Henry Hwang

Why, in the Peking Opera, are women's roles played by men?...Because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act.

David Hewson

In their vanity men focus on what they wish to hear and miss the hidden meaning, the lurking threat.

David Horowitz

For many Washington liberals, terrorism was not the instrument of political fanatics and evil men, but was the product of social conditions - poverty, racism and oppression - for which the Western democracies, including Israel were always ultimately to blame.

David Hilbert

No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man; no other idea has so fruitfully stimulated his intellect; yet no other concept stands in greater need of clarification than that of the infinite

David Ricardo

The opinions that the price of commodities depends solely on the proportion of supply and demand, or demand to supply, has become almost an axiom in political economy, and has been the source of much error in that science.

David Hume

Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact; it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors.

David Brin

Reciprocal accountability, or criticism [is] the only known antidote to error.

Blaise Pascal

If God exists, not seeking God must be the gravest error imaginable. If one decides to sincerely seek for God and doesn't find God, the lost effort is negligible in comparison to what is at risk in not seeking God in the first place.

Jef Field

We're just finding ways to win. One game we'll play real well defensively, and then in that second game (Monday) we made five errors and still found a way to win the game.

Jane Austen

Without scheming to do wrong, or to make others unhappy, there may be error and there may be misery. Thoughtlessness, want of attention to other people's feelings, and want of resolution, will do the business.

Arthur Koestler

In the social equation, the value of a single life is nil; in the cosmic equation, it is infinite... Not only communism, but any political movement which implicitly relies on purely utilitarian ethics, must become a victim to the same fatal error. It is a fallacy as naïve as a mathematical teaser, and yet its consequences lead straight to Goya's Disasters, to the reign of the guillotine, the torture chambers of the Inquisition, or the cellars of the Lubianka.

Arthur Koestler

Every error has its consequences and venges itself unto the seventh generation.

Ayrton Senna

My biggest error? Something that is to happen yet.