|
2006 September 22
|
"Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain
characteristics of a vigorous intelligence." |
"The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. ... One might point out how the Renaissance was great, because it sought to solve no social problem, and busied itself not about such things, but suffered the individual to develop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had great and individual artists, and great, individual men. One might point out how Louis XIV, by creating the modern state, destroyed the individualism of the artist ..." |
"Freedom in art, freedom in society,
this is the double goal towards which
all consistent and logical minds must strive." |
|
2006 September 21
|
"Men of ideas vanish when freedom vanishes." |
"The freedom to make and admit mistakes is at the core of the scientific process. If we are asked to forswear error, or worse, to say that error means fraud, then we cannot function as scientists." |
"Science is organized knowledge.
Wisdom is organized life." |
|
2006 September 20
|
"The censor’s sword pierces deeply into the heart of free expression." |
"But once a culture develops sufficiently to become skeptical,
the idea of censorship becomes less attractive.
To suppress a book or a picture or a sculpture or a play or a film
is a terrible act of aggression against the artist who created it.
This is a miming of capital punishment;
it destroys the life that has been emanated by a life." |
"The artist and the censor differ in this wise:
that the first is a decent mind in an indecent body and
that the second is an indecent mind in a decent body." |
|
2006 September 19
|
"Science has proof without any certainty.
Creationists have certainty without any proof." |
"There is something fascinating about science.
One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture
out of such a trifling investment of fact." |
"Ever since the beginning of modern science, the best minds have recognized that "the range of acknowledged ignorance will grow with the advance of science." Unfortunately, the popular effect of this scientific advance has been a belief, seemingly shared by many scientists, that the range of our ignorance is steadily diminishing and that we can therefore aim at more comprehensive and deliberate control of all human activities. It is for this reason that those intoxicated by the advance of knowledge so often become the enemies of freedom." |
|
2006 September 18
|
"'Painters and poets,' you say,
'have always had an equal license in bold invention.'
We know; we claim the liberty for ourselves
and in turn we give it to others." |
"It is the freedom to blaspheme, to transgress,
to move beyond the pale, that is at the heart
of all intellectual, artistic and political endeavor.
Far from censoring offensive speech,
a vibrant and diverse society should encourage it.
In any society that is not uniform, grey and homogeneous,
there are bound to be clashes of viewpoints." |
"It is the great parent of science & of virtue:
and that a nation will be great in both,
always in proportion as it is free." |
|
|
|
