Daniel Immerwahr Quotes

Truths turn into dogmas the moment they are disputed.

Certainty without power can be interesting, even amusing. Certainty with power can be dangerous.

I'm not final because I'm right, I'm right because I'm final.

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog.

I am not so interested in religion or dogma of any kind. It is too restrictive for me, too organizational, too hierarchical, and too tied up in power and being right. You call it a "rabid evangelism."

Always, as in this case, the government urges hasty decision to forestall some emergency or serve some purpose and pleads that paralysis will result if its claims to power are denied.

We are not final because we are infallible; we are infallible because we are final.

What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.

Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

There is no fettering of authority.

Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that where ever others differ from them it is so far error.

People tend not to want to question dogma. But I'm afraid of dogma.

People tend to rally around power.

When you're convinced that you're right and you believe that you have the license to do anything because you're right, you can be bossy and you can be dangerous. You can be oppressive. You can be a tyrant.

In corporation [corporate] religions as in others, the heretic must be cast out not because of the probability that he is wrong but because of the possibility that he is right.

Dogma is the convictions of one man imposed authoritatively upon others.

One cannot escape dogmas—those who hold most firmly to dogmas today are those whose only dogma is that dogmas should be feared like the plague.

Dogma, Whatever Form It Takes, Is The Ultimate Enemy Of Human Freedom.

But scientists, who ought to know Assure us that it must be so. Oh, let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about.

There is a comfort in conformity, a security in control, that is appealing. There is a thrill in domination, and we are all secretly attracted to violence.

Strength without judgment falls by its own weight.

Obedience is the key to every door.

Obedience to authority saves many skins

The price of maintaining membership in the establishment is unquestioning acceptance of authority.

They're all so much afraid of the Council that they're not afraid of anything else.