initial assumptions Quotes

I Use The Square To Begin My Solutions Because The Square Is A Non-choice, Really. In The Course Of Development, I Search For The Forces That Would Disprove The Square.

We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study ofphilosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim. Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.

The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.

Journalists often ask me when I go to the field, 'What do you expect to find?' And my answer always is, 'The unexpected,' because we're just looking at the tip of the iceberg; we've just scratched the surface.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

I always thought that "humanist" was a good word long before I understood that anyone thought it was a bad word.

It has to be fun for you when you see somebody at a distance and you take their opinion of what they're going to be like and then you go interview them, and they're totally different. You're like, wow, I didn't expect that.

Most people, I've noticed, are instinctively harsh to strangers. They expect every approach to be an attack, every question to be an interruption.