Francois Rabelais Quotes

Ignorance is the first requisite of the historian - ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.

Art's development should be dialectical and not metaphysical.

Each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time.

History is an antidote to the hubris of the present.

The idea that historians aren't affected by what goes on around them I think is slightly fanciful.

I always try and distinguish between facts and opinions.

Every film that is made about the past is always a reflection of the present.

To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.

It is easier taking the beaten path than making our way over bogs and precipices. The great difficulty in philosophy is to come to every question with a mind fresh and unshackled by former theories, though strengthened by exercise and information.

Consistently wise decisions can only be made by those whose wisdom is constantly challenged.

When we are in the grasp of illusion - or, for that matter, whenever we have a new idea - instead of searching for ways to prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct. Psychologists call this the confirmation bias, and it presents a major impediment of our ability to break free from the misinterpretation of randomness.

In short, numbers are accepted as evidence when they agree with preconceptions, but not when they don’t.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.

I mean it as a compliment when I say that you could almost define a philosopher as someone who won't take common sense for an answer.

Fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.

We must re-center philosophy within our frame of reference which I think is the way to deal with it.

A good writer of history is a guy who is suspicious.

Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.

What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.

The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad.

A wise man first thinks and then speaks and a fool speaks first and then thinks.

A man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if indeed such a man exists.

Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.

Life with Fools consists in Drinking; with the wise Man, living's Thinking.

Young people today are flooded with disconnected images but lack a sympathetic instrument to analyze them as well as a historical frame of reference in which to situate them. I am reminded of an unnerving scene in Stanley Kubrick's epic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, where an astronaut, his air hose cut by the master computer gone amok, spins helplessly off into space.