Amazing Side Effect of Humility
"Learning from people you don't like is a super power.
Takes humility."
Orwell and Huxley, per Postman
Quote:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.
Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.
Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.
— Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
Quotes by Mark Twain & Carl Sagan & Upton Sinclair
Three quotes for Today. Twain and Sagan quotes are quite similar, worth mentioning them both in this day and age. These are three of my favorite quotes:
“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled” – Mark Twain
“If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” ― Carl Sagan
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair
Critical Words are not Violence
“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson in His Journals
About Going and Plans
How to reconcile these two quotes?
“If a man knows not which port he sails, no wind is favourable.” Seneca
But then see this:
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the [Cheshire] Cat. “I don’t much care where—” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. “—so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation. “Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
—Chapter 6, Pig and Pepper