There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.

Niels Bohr (1855 – 1962)

There are two kinds of truth: those of reasoning and those of fact. The truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; the truths of facts are contingent and their opposite is possible.

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz (1656 – 1716)

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951)

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again

Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809)

Force, gravity, attraction, and terms of this sort are useful for reasonings and reckonings about motion and bodies in motion, but not for understanding the simple nature of motion itself or for indicating so many distinct qualities. As for attraction, it was certainly introduced by Newton, not as a true, physical quality, but only as a mathematical hypothesis. . . .  [T]o be of service to reckoning and mathematical demonstration is one thing, to set forth the nature of things is another.

George Berkeley (1685 – 1753)

It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.

Niels Bohr (1885 – 1962)

Science is . . . . a creation of the human mind, with its freely invented ideas and concepts . . . .  One of the most primitive concepts is that of an object . . . . The concepts of the pure numbers 2, 3, 4 . . . , freed from the objects from which they arose, are creations of the thinking mind . . . .  The psychological subjective feeling of time enables us to order our impressions, to state that one event precedes another. But to connect every instant of time with a number, by the use of a clock, to regard time as a one-dimensional continuum, is already an invention. So also are the concepts of Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry, and our space understood as a three dimensional continuum.

Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)

If you thought that science was certain – well, that is just an error on your part.

Richard Feynman (1918 – 1988)

The process of induction is the process of assuming the simplest law that can be made to harmonize with our experience.
This process, however, has no logical foundation but only a psychological one.
It is clear that there are no grounds for believing that the simplest course of events will really happen.
That the sun will rise to-morrow, is an hypothesis; and that means that we do not know whether it will rise.
A necessity for one thing to happen because another has happened does not exist. There is only logical necessity.
At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951)

Essence and substance, sequence, cause,
beginning, ending, space and time,
These be the toys of manhood’s mind,
at once ridiculous and sublime.

Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821 – 1890)

It is a rational presupposition of ours that everything has a natural and perceptible cause. We distinctly resent the idea of invisible and arbitrary forces, for it is not so long ago that we made our escape from that frightening world of dreams and superstitions, and constructed for ourselves a picture of the cosmos worthy of rational consciousness – that latest and greatest achievement of man. We are now surrounded by a world that is obedient to rational laws. It is true that we do not know the causes of everything, but they will in time be discovered, and these discoveries will accord with our reasoned expectations. That is our hope, and we take it as much for granted as primitive man does his own assumptions. There are also chance occurrences, to be sure, but these are merely accidental, and we have granted them a causality of their own. Chance occurrences are repellent to the mind that loves order. They have a laughable and therefore irritating way of throwing out of gear the predictable course of events. We resent the idea of chance occurrences as much as that of invisible forces, for they remind us too much of Satanic imps or of the caprice of a deus ex machina [an unexpected, artificial or contrived event saving a seemingly hopeless situation, as in a contrived plot in a novel, play or movie]. They are the worst enemies of our careful calculations and a continual threat to all our undertakings. Being admittedly contrary to reason, they deserve contempt, and yet we should not fail to give them their due . . . .  In spite of our reluctance to admit chance, and in spite of the fact that events run true to general laws, it is undeniable that we are always and everywhere exposed to incalculable accidents. And what is more invisible and arbitrary than chance? What is more unavoidable and more annoying?

Carl Jung (1875 – 1961)

Sensory perceptions are different than the things that are perceived.

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Language is unable to express what it is like to have any sensory perception.

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Language, thought and logic cannot describe what things actually are.

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Any measurement or observation of an elementary physical particle changes it; so that what is measured or observed is not what would have been found if the observation or measurement had not been made.

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What is shown on any instrument used to make a measurement or observation of a physical thing, is not any physical property or quality that the thing measured or observed actually has; what is shown on the instrument is merely the effect that something about the thing had on the instrument.

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Our interpretation of what is shown on any instrument used to make a measurement or observation is not any property or quality that the thing  measured or observed actually has, it is merely what we think about the reading shown on the instrument.

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We are now unable to establish what physical things actually are; we give what we observe and what we think names, but what actually exists in the physical world outside of our mind is unknown.

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We are now unable to establish why things do what they do.

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We are now unable to establish how things do what they do.

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We are now unable to establish what if anything causes things to do what they do.

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We are now unable to establish whether cause and effect actually exist.

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We are now unable to establish where things actually are; we only have some ideas of where things are in relation to some other things.

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We are now unable to establish when things happen; we only have some ideas of when things happen in relation to when some other things happen.

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All that we can do now is sometimes predict the probability or propensity of the results that will be perceived when an action is taken or a measurement or observation is made.

A. Longgrin (1942 –    )

The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 – 1799)

What people haven’t seemed to notice is that on earth, of all the billions of species that have evolved, only one has developed intelligence to the level of producing technology. Which means that kind of intelligence is really not very useful. It’s not actually, in the general case, of much evolutionary value. We tend to think, because we love to think of ourselves, human beings, as the top of the evolutionary ladder, that the intelligence we have, that makes us human beings, is the thing that all of evolution is striving toward. But what we know is that that’s not true. Obviously it doesn’t matter that much if you’re a beetle, that you be really smart. If it were, evolution would have produced much more intelligent beetles.

Tim Maudlin (1958 –     )

A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man—the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior to a man by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which a man is entirely ignorant.

G. K. Chesterton (1874 – 1936)

When one views the world . . . one sees that order and disorder, as we now recognize them, are purely human inventions. We are interested in certain types of arrangement, useful, aesthetic, or moral, – so interested that whenever we find them realized, the fact emphatically rivets our attention. The result is that we work over the contents of the world selectively. It is over flowing with disorderly arrangements from our point of view, but order is the only thing we care for and look at, and by choosing, one can always find some sort of orderly arrangement in the midst of any chaos. . . . Our dealings with Nature are just like this. She is a vast plenum in which our attention draws capricious lines in innumerable directions. We count and name whatever lies upon the special lines we trace, whilst the other things and the untraced lines are neither named nor counted. There are in reality infinitely more things ‘unadapted’ to each other in this world than there are things ‘adapted’; infinitely more things with irregular relations than with regular relations between them. But we look for the regular kind of thing exclusively, and ingeniously discover and preserve it in our memory. It accumulates with other regular kinds, until the collection of them fills our encyclopaedias. Yet all the while between and around them lies an infinite anonymous chaos of objects that no one ever thought of together, of relations that never yet attracted our attention.

William James (1842 – 1910)

In face of the bewildering and impressive profusion of animated objects, the individual creates an abstraction, i.e., an abstract and general image, which conjures impressions into a law-abiding form. This image has the magical importance of a defense against the chaotic change of experience. He becomes so lost and submerged in this image that finally its abstract truth is set above the reality of life; and therewith life, which might disturb the enjoyment of abstract beauty, is wholly suppressed. He raises himself to an abstraction; he identifies himself with the eternal validity of his image and therein congeals, since it practically amounts to a redeeming formula. In this way he divests himself of his real self and transfers his life into his abstraction, in which it is, so to speak, crystallized. But since the feeling-into subject feels his activity, his life, into the object, he therewith also yields himself to the object, in so far as the felt-into content represents an essential part of the subject. He becomes the object; he identifies himself with it, and in this way gets rid of himself. Because he objectifies himself, he, therefore, de-subjectifies himself.

Carl Gustav Jung (1875 – 1961)

Does the cell, moving freely in the pond or in our body, seek its food?
Is there some modicum of mind in it?
That is a question natural to ask.
It is not decisively answerable.

Sir Charles Sherrington (1857 – 1952)

A grey rock, said Ruskin, is a good sitter. That is one type of behavior. A darting dragon-fly is another type of behavior. We call the one alive, the other not. But both are fundamentally balances of give and take of motion with their surround. To make ‘life’ a distinction between them is at root to treat them both artificially.

Sir Charles Sherrington (1857 – 1952)

Opinion says hot and cold, but the reality is atoms and empty space. (In reality there is nothing but atoms and space.)

Democritus (c. 460 – 370 BCE)

As a matter of fact you do not know where you are located.   Why? See here.

Thor Rensler (1947 –     )

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a prettier shell, or a smoother pebble than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727)

The most ordinary things are to philosophy a source of insoluble puzzles. With infinite ingenuity it constructs a concept of space or time and then finds it absolutely impossible that there be objects in this space or that processes occur during this time. . . the source of this kind of logic lies in excessive confidence in the so-called laws of thought.

Ludwig Boltzman (1844 – 1906)

Deep knowledge in philosophy inexorably and inevitably leads to the ineffable.

A. Longgrin (1924 –    )

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744)

Whoever sets out to persuade men to accept a new idea, or one which seems to be new, not just as an idea, but as a truth that is felt, should know beforehand that the human mind is not a blank sheet, on which one can write with ease, and should not therefore grieve or despair when he finds that people do not pay attention to him.
Ahad Ha’am (1856 – 1927)

Let them laugh at me for speaking of things which they do not understand; and I must pity them while they laugh at me.
St. Augustine (354 – 430)

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