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Enquiry Quotes

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Enquiry Quotes

“Los principios son métodos de investigación y previsión que requieren ser comprobados por los acontecimientos; y el esfuerzo, dignificado por el tiempo, de asimilar la moral a las matemáticas, es solo una forma de dar apoyo a una antigua autoridad dogmática o de sentar una nueva en el trono de aquella; pero el carácter experimental de los juicios morales no significa que sean completamente inciertos y efímeros. Los principios existen como hipótesis con las cuales experimentar”

Moral PrinciplesEnquiryMorality Without Religion
Book:Human Nature and Conduct
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“Let us enquire. Who, then, shall challenge the words? Why are they challenged. And by whom? By those who call themselves the guardians of morality, and who are the constituted guardians of religion. Enquiry, it seems, suits not them. They have drawn the line, beyond which human reason shall not pass -- above which human virtue shall not aspire! All that is without their faith or above their rule, is immorality, is atheism, is -- I know not what.”

KnowsHumansReasonSeemsChallengesLinesVirtueAtheismMoralitySuitsAspireGuardianImmoralityHuman ReasonEnquiry
Author:Frances Wright
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“The purpose of scientific enquiry is not to compile an inventory of factual information, nor to build up a totalitarian world picture of natural Laws in which every event that is not compulsory is forbidden. We should think of it rather as a logically articulated structure of justifiable beliefs about nature.”

ThinkingWorldShouldLawPurposeBeliefNaturalEventsInformationStructureForbiddenNatural LawScientific MethodFactualCompulsoryInventoryEnquiry
Book:Induction and intuition in scientific thought
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“The branches of mathematics are as various as the sciences to which they belong, and each subject of physical enquiry has its appropriate mathematics. In every form of material manifestation, there is a corresponding form of human thought, so that the human mind is as wide in its range of thought as the physical universe in which it thinks.”

ThinkingMindHumansFormUniverseSubjectsMaterialsMathematicsVariousWideRangeManifestationBranchesAppropriateHuman MindCorrespondingHuman ThoughtEnquiry
Author:Benjamin Peirce
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“I rejoice in a belief that intellectual light will spring up in the dark corners of the earth; that freedom of enquiry will produce liberality of conduct; that mankind will reverse the absurd position that the many were, made for the few; and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in another.”

MadeWarLightEarthBeliefDarkMankindPositionProduceIntellectualSpringSlaveCornersAbsurdRejoiceReverseGlobesFreemanEnquiryLiberality
Book:The Papers of George Washington: April-June 1789
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“... your spiritual teachers caution you against enquiry--tell you not to read certain books; not to listen to certain people; to beware of profane learning; to submit your reason, and to receive their doctrines for truths. Such advice renders them suspicious counsellors.”

PeopleBookReasonSpiritualCertainReligionTeacherAdviceDoctrineCensorshipSubmitCautionSuspiciousYou AgainClergyProfaneEnquirySpiritual TeachersCounsellors
Book:Course of popular lectures; with 3 addresses on various public occasions, and a reply to the charges against the French reformers of 1789
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“Every disastrous accident alarms us, and sets us on enquiries concerning the principles whence it arose: Apprehensions spring up with regard to futurity: And the mind, sunk into diffidence, terror, and melancholy, has recourse to every method of appeasing those secret intelligent powers, on whom our fortune is supposed entirely to depend.”

MindReligionSecretPrinciplesDependsSpringIntelligentRegardMethodFortuneTerrorAccidentsMelancholyAlarmsApprehensionRecourseEnquiryDiffidence
Book:An inquiry concerning human understanding. A dissertation on the passions. An inquiry concerning the principles of morals. The natural history of religion
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“The mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an enquiry or discourse concerning the others: and if we think ofa wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it.”

IfsThinkingPainBuildingReflectionWoundsIntroducingApartmentDiscourseReflectingEnquiry
Book:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature
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“It is high time that laymen abandoned the misleading belief that scientific enquiry is a cold dispassionate enterprise, bleached of imaginative qualities, and that a scientist is a man who turns the handle of discovery; for at every level of endeavour scientific research is a passionate undertaking and the Promotion of Natural Knowledge depends above all on a sortee into what can be imagined but is not yet known.”

MenScienceTurnsBeliefNaturalLevelsQualityKnownColdDependsResearchDiscoveryScientistPassionateHandleEnterpriseAbandonedImaginativePromotionMisleadUndertakingsEndeavourScientific ResearchEnquiryLaymanDispassionate
Author:Peter Medawar
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“It is conceivable that animal life might have the attribute of using the heat of surrounding matter, at its natural temperature, as a source of energy for mechanical effect . . . .The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific enquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms.”

HumansDifferentMatterMightMovingEnergyGrowthNaturalAnimalResultsGenerationsInfluenceEffectsSourceMiraclePlantSeedsRangeHeatFree WillAttributesAtomsVegetablesParticlesTemperatureAnimal LifeEnquiryFortuitousConcurrenceDaily Miracles
Author:Lord Kelvin
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“Had you or I been born at the Bay of Soldania, possibly our Thoughts, and Notions, had not exceeded those brutish ones of the Hotentots that inhabit there: And had the Virginia King Apochancana, been educated in England, he had, perhaps been as knowing a Divine, and as good a Mathematician as any in it. The difference between him, and a more improved English-man, lying barely in this, That the exercise of his Facilities was bounded within the Ways, Modes, and Notions of his own Country, and never directed to any other or farther Enquiries.”

MenWayCountryScienceLyingBornDifferencesKnowingDivineKingsExerciseEnglandNotionEducatedMathematicianOur ThoughtsFacilityVirginiaEnquiry
Author:John Locke
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“Theology differs from science in many respects, because of its different subject matter, a personal God who cannot be put to the test in the way that the impersonal physical world can be subjected to experimental enquiry. Yet science and theology have this in common, that each can be, and should be defended as being investigations of what is, the search for increasing verisimilitude in our understanding of reality.”

WorldWayShouldDifferentMatterRealityUnderstandingCommonSubjectsTestsTheologyInvestigationSubject MatterEnquiryDifferent Subjects
Author:John Polkinghorne
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“Political Economy as a branch of science is extremely modern; but the subject with which its enquiries are conversant has in all ages necessarily constituted one of the chief practical interests of mankind.”

AgePoliticalInterestEconomyModernSubjectsMankindPracticalsChiefsBranchesEnquiryPolitical Economy
Book:Principles of Political Economy: With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy
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“Funnily enough we have never had one enquiry for Paul Scholes. You know why? Because they all know he will never leave. in my time he would be in the top six or seven (best United players ever) without a doubt. His contribution and quality have been great, even without the fantastic goals he has scored. [ . . . ] He has that wonderful velvet touch on the ball. When he gets it, it goes stone dead. It is wonderful to see that amidst all the mayhem that can happen in a football match.”

KnowsHas BeensEnoughHappensWould BeGoalUnitedQualityDoubtPlayerWonderfulFootballSixStonesBallsSevenFantasticMy TimeContributionVelvetMayhemScholesEnquiryPaul ScholesFootball Match
Author:Alex Ferguson
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“Stalin was experimenting with telepathy in the 1930's. Winston Churchill had a paranormal office, trying to get people to travel out of their bodies and see behind enemy lines in the Second World War. And the Pentagon... The X-Files is based on a real department in the Pentagon, that's still there now. Pretty much every government, probably as far back in time as we can go, has one. And the police will quite often - and when I say often, I mean often - they will go to mediums if all else fails in the enquiry.”

PeopleIfsWorldTryingMeanStillsWarRealBodyGovernmentLinesBehindsEnemyFailingOfficePoliceMediumsWar Of The WorldsParanormalDepartmentFilesSecond World War1930sPentagonBack In TimeTelepathyEnquiryX Files
Author:Peter James
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“There is something myopic and stunted in focussing only on the meaning of words and sentences. And this myopia is especially unfortunate when combined with a rather abstract view of a language as a set of elements and rules for combining these. For the result is to divorce enquiry into meaning from attention to the way words - and gestures, facial expressions, rituals and so on - are embedded in practices, in what Wittgenstein called 'the stream of life'.”

WayLanguageResultsViewsAttentionPracticeExpressionElementsDivorceSentencesAbstractStreamsRitualGesturesUnfortunateEmbeddedCombiningFacialEnquiryFacial ExpressionMyopicMyopiaMeanings Of Words
Author:David E. Cooper
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“If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”

IfsDoeMatterReasonFactsHandsSchoolAsksNumbersExistenceIllusionMathematicsMathCommitInstanceMathematicalFlamesAbstractReasoningDivinityQuantityVolumeMetaphysicsMatter Of FactEnquirySophistryHume
Author:David Hume
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“How she might have felt had there been no Captain Wentworth in the case, was not worth enquiry; for there was a Captain Wentworth: and be the conclusion of the present suspense good or bad, her affection would be his forever. Their union, she believed, could not divide her more from other men, than their final separation.”

MenMightWould BeFeltCasesForeverUnionsFinalsAffectionSeparationConclusionSuspenseDividesCaptainsEnquiry
Book:Persuasion In Modern English
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“His attention caught, her companion raised his eyes from the book which lay open beside him on the table and directed them upon her in a look of aloof enquiry. 'What's that? Did you say something to me, Venetia?' 'Yes, love,' responded his sister cheerfully, 'but it wasn't of the least consequence, and in any event I answered for you. You would be astonished, I daresay, if you knew what interesting conversations I enjoy with myself.”

IfsLooksBookWould BeEyeEnjoyInterestingAttentionEventsConversationConsequenceTablesLaysRaisedCaughtHis EyesCompanionAloofEnquiryInteresting Conversation
Author:Georgette Heyer
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“The University of Cambridge, in accordance with that law of its evolution, by which, while maintaining the strictest continuity between the successive phases of its history, it adapts itself with more or less promptness to the requirements of the times, has lately instituted a course of Experimental Physics.”

LawScienceCoursesHistoryEvolutionDiscoveryUniversityPhysicsPhasesRequirementsMaintainingContinuityCambridgeEnquiryPromptness
Book:Maxwell on Molecules and Gases
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“The whole history of these books (i.e. the Gospels) is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.”

MenMindHas BeensBookWholeSeemsReligionCausesEasyReligiousChristianityDoubtMinutesPicksEvidenceExtraordinaryGenuineTricksVainInternalsDiamondFabricInferiorsTestamentNew TestamentDoubtfulFounding Fathers ReligionFounding Fathers ReligiousDefectiveFounding Fathers Anti ReligionFounding Fathers AtheistEnquiry
Author:Thomas Jefferson
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“Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.”

GivingMindChildrenLittlesGodFactsSeemsChristianScienceNatureTeachRiskGiving UpHighestAccountsPreparedNotionSurrenderGods WillPeace Of MindStrongestConceptionBe PreparedAbyssEnquiryPreconceived Notions
Author:Thomas Huxley
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