Dr. Tim’s Classroom Quotations

(in no particular order)

 

 

 

“A god whom we could understand exhaustively, and whose revelation of himself confronted us with no mysteries whatsoever, would be a god in man’s image, and therefore an imaginary god.”

 

                        —J. I. Packer, theologian

 

“We are sometimes tempted to ask whether the time will ever arrive, when science shall have obtained such an ascendancy in the education of millions, that it will be possible to welcome new truths, instead of always looking upon them with fear and disquiet, and to hail every important victory gained over error, instead of resisting the new discovery, long after the evidence in its favor is conclusive.”

 

                        Charles Lyell, 1872

 

“As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists.  If such humility could be conveyed to everybody, the world of human activities would be more appealing”

 

                        Albert Einstein, 1932

 

“Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it”

 

                        –André Gide

 

To be uncertain is uncomfortable, but to be certain is ridiculous.

 

                        —Chinese proverb

 

“When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also add that some things are more nearly certain than others.”

 

                        –Bertrand Russell

 

“Character is what you are in the dark”

 

                        –Dwight Moody

“Civilization is just a temporary failure of entropy”

   Christine Nelson

 

“We might as well attempt to introduce a new planet into the solar system, or to annihilate one already in existence, as to create or destroy a particle of hydrogen”

 

                        –John Dalton, 1808

 

“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance”

 

                        –Derek Bok, Former President of Harvard

 

“Education is the process of telling smaller and smaller lies”

 J.R. Deller, Jr.

 

“Either God exists or He doesn’t.

Either I believe in God or I don’t.

Of the four possibilities, only one is to my disadvantage.

To avoid that possibility, I believe in God”

            –Pascal

 

“We are often most in the dark when we are most certain, and most enlightened when we are the most confused”

  –M. Scott Peck

 

“I used to be wretched under the old fashioned ‘argument from design’ of which I felt although I was unable to prove to myself the worthlessness….your book drove away the constraint of my old superstition as if it had been a nightmare and was the first to give me freedom of thought”

 

 

Sir Francis Galton in a letter to Charles Darwin, 1869

 

“He who will not reason is a bigot; He who cannot is a fool; And he who dares not, is a slave”

 

            William Drummond

 

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world, and a desire to enjoy the world.  This makes it hard to plan the day”

 

                        E.B. White

 

“We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our essential ignorance”

  Warren Weaver

 

“I do not pretend to know, where many ignorant men are sure”

 

                        Clarence Darrow

                        Scopes Trial, 1925

 

“Income seldom exceeds personal development”

            –Jim Rohn

 

“In the modern world, by the very nature of our civilization, one cannot expect large numbers of people to be capable of truly independent thought.”

 

                        –Harry Blamires

 

“It is by faithfully weighing evidence, without regard to preconceived notions, by earnestly and patiently searching for what is true, that we have attained our dignity…”

 

                        Charles Lyell, 1872

 

“Keeping an open mind is a virtue—but not so open your brains fall out.  Of course we must be willing to change our minds when warranted by new evidence.  But the evidence must be strong.  Not all claims to knowledge have equal merit.”

  Carl Sagan, 1995

“Let us permit nature to have her way; she understands her business better than we do.”

 -Montaigne

 

"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

                        —Lewis Carroll

 

"The fool will turn the whole science of astronomy upside down"

 —Martin Luther condemning Copernicus for proposing heliocentricity

 

“Moral disagreements between reasonable people warrant the conclusion that not all moral truths are obvious, [and] not all moral questions are easy.”

 

Robert P. George
Professor of Political Science, Princeton University

 

"My concern is not whether God is on our side; my great concern is to be on God's side."

 Abraham Lincoln

 

“Nature never deceives us, it is always we who deceive ourselves”

 -Jean Jaques Rouseau           

 

"So as this only point among the rest remaineth sure and certain, namely, that nothing is certain. . . "

                        -Pliny The Elder

                        (23-79A.D.)

 

“One of the greatest marvels of creation is the capacity of the human brain to withstand the introduction of knowledge”

 Theodore Roosevelt

 

"My mind is my own church.  All national institutions of churches...appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

 —Thomas Paine, 1795

 “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance”

 -Confucius

 

“It isn’t what people think that’s important, but the reason they think what they think”

 –Eugene Ionesco

 

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use”

 -Galileo Galilei

“The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide”

 

            –Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

"Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists.  Science does not even promise that everything in the universe is amenable to the scientific process."

                        -Isaac Asimov

 

“Scientific habits of mind can help people in every walk of life to deal sensibly with problems that often involve evidence, quantitative considerations, logical arguments, and uncertainty; without the ability to think critically and independently, citizens are easy prey to dogmatists, flimflam artists, and purveyors of simple solutions to complex problems”

 

                        F. James Rutherford and Andrew Ahlgren, in Science for All Americans, 1990

 

"Science has proof without any certainty.

Creationists have certainty without any proof."

 

-                        -Ashley Montague

 

“In science 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent'. I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.”

                        –Stephen J. Gould

 

“People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them”

 

                        -Dave Barry

 

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

                        -Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

“The Christian Right is neither”

                       

                        Moby

 

“The field cannot be seen from within the field”

 

                        -Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

"The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science and imposture is the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance."

 

            William Hazlitt (1778-1830)

                        -English critic/essayist

 

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

 

                        -George Bernard Shaw

“To think is, whether you want or no, to exaggerate.  If you prefer not to exaggerate, you must remain silent; or rather, you must paralyze your intellect and find some way of becoming an idiot.”

 

                        -Ortega y Gasset

 

“We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices.  The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think — in fact, they do so.”

                        -Bertrand Russell

 

True wisdom is not manifested in trying to see resemblances in things which

differ, but in discerning the real difference among those which resemble one another.

-Unknown

 

 

"Man is the only animal that has the True Religion—several of them."

                        —Mark Twain

 

“…The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion…”

 

George Washington & the U.S. Congress

The Barbary Treaties, Article 11

November 4, 1796

 “I can’t stand intolerant people”

                        Tore Adolfson

 

"Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold. What have we to offer in exchange? Uncertainty! Insecurity!"

                        -Isaac Asimov

 

“We shall continue to have a worsening ecological crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.”

 

                        -Lynn White, Jr.

 

“When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.”

 

                        Abraham Lincoln

 

"In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who

accept dogma and don't know it."

                        -G.K. Chesterson

 

"If there were no God, there would be no atheists." - Where All Roads

                        G.K. Chesterton, 1922

 

"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it."

                        - G.K. Chesterton, 1925