Eric S. Raymond Quotes

In summoning even the wisest of physicians to our aid, it is probably that he is relying upon a scientific "truth", the error of which will become obvious in just a few years' time.

In medicine, it has long been recognized that even a quack remedy that is harmless in itself can be fatal when it substitutes for an effective medication or treatment. The time is overdue for that same recognition to apply to politics.

To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.

I have the consolation to believe, that, while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it.

Speed is one of the great curses of modern civilization, obsession with speed leads to quantitative approach; we come to believe that more is better. This is very materialistic, we have to realize that it is the quality of life, quality of relationships, quality of food, medicine, education and everything else which matters.

I just don't need cable news. There's nothing that happens on cable news that I don't already know. I'm talking about just the acquisition of information, learning things. What is on cable TV is not that. Cable news isn't news. What is happening on cable news right now is a political assassination of not just Donald Trump, but of ideas and cultural mores that I believe in.

Our political class no longer has any convictions. You can only pass along the beliefs that you hold. They no longer believe in France - they have a post-national worldview. I call them France-skeptics. That's why democracy is collapsing here in France.

I believe that through its rational evaluation of truth and indifference to personal belief, science transcends religious and political divisions and so does bind us into a greater, more resilient whole.

I'm glad to know that we do have political leaders that believe in God, and that has been true from the days of George Washington.

The political writer, then, is the ultimate optimist, believing people are capable of change and using words as one way to try and penetrate the privatism of our lives.

I truly believe a woman's weight is a political issue, and if one young woman out there can see me and not feel crummy about herself, that's a good thing.

I believe in market economics. But to paraphrase Churchill - who said this about democracy and political regimes - a market economy might be the worst economic regime available, apart from the alternatives. I believe that people react to incentives, that incentives matter, and that prices reflect the way things should be allocated. But I also believe that market economies sometimes have market failures, and when these occur, there's a role for prudential - not excessive - regulation of the financial system.

I'll always push for what I believe in. That's what you're supposed to do. If you're an American, you're supposed to be part of the political process, especially if you've been denied it.

Our modern lifestyle is not a political creation. Before 1700, everybody was poor as hell. Life was short and brutish. It wasn't because we didn't have good politicians; we had some really good politicians. But then we started inventing - electricity, steam engines, microprocessors, understanding genetics and medicine and things like that. Yes, stability and education are important - I'm not taking anything away from that - but innovation is the real driver of progress.

I believe the Democratic Party has got to be firmly on the side of working families, taking on the big money interests, who today, to a very significant degree, control our economic and political life.

As property, honestly obtained, is best secured by an equality of rights, so ill-gotten property depends for protection on a monopoly of rights. He who has robbed another of his property, will next endeavor to disarm him of his rights, to secure that property; for when the robber becomes the legislator he believes himself secure.

It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since, as Swift says, it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought.

I believe in holistic medicine, yoga, Pilates and so on. But I also believe in banana split sundaes once in a while.

I don't believe you should interfere with any classic for reasons of religious or political correctness.

I believe that all literatures can have political uses and misuses. Sometimes politics can enhance, sometimes it can get in the way of imaginative literature. . . . I'm not sure one can be a creative writer and a politician -- not a "good" politician.

In a period of such obsessing political controversy as the present, I believe that I am that strange animal, the individual without any politics at all.

I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism . . . The only way to react is to get up in the morning and start the day by saying four or five vastly politically incorrect things before breakfast!

Make no mistake about it: the labeling of someone's language as 'sexist' involves a political judgment and implies the desirability of a particular sociological doctrine. One may be in favor of that doctrine (as I believe I am) but it is quite another matter to force writers by edicts and censorship into accepting it.

I was trying to say something about Christianity, the idea that you have to be tortured to attain heaven. I didn't believe that.

I believe that a writer has to tell what they think is the truth in a human experience. The truth of the human experience cannot escape the political.