Showing posts with label skepticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label skepticism. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 07, 2020

The births of all things are weak and tender; and therefore we should have our eyes intent on beginnings; for as when, in its infancy, the danger is not perceived, so when it is grown up, the remedy is as little to be found.

'Tis a misfortune to be at such a pass, that the best test of truth is the multitude of believers in a crowd, where the number of fools so much exceeds the wise.

Montaigne

Sunday, October 20, 2019

I do not disapprove the use we make of things the earth produces, nor doubt, in the least, of the power and fertility of Nature, and of its application to our necessities: I very well see that pikes and swallows live by her laws; but I mistrust the inventions of our mind, our knowledge and art, to countenance which, we have abandoned Nature and her rules, and wherein we keep no bounds nor moderation. 

Montaigne

Thursday, August 22, 2019

To see into thy nature, O Zeus, is baffling to the mind. I have been praying to thee without knowing whether thou art necessity or nature or simply the intelligence of mortals. 

Euripides, The Trojan Women (per Philip Wheelwright, The PreSocratics

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

We're an information economy.... it's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information.  Fragments that can be retrieved, amplified...

William Gibson,  Johnny Mnemonic


Thursday, October 19, 2017

The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine.


Ancient proverb coming down through Sextus Empiricus