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Limits Quotes

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Limits Quotes

“The aim of the book is to set a limit to thought, or rather - not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to set a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought). It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be set, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense.”

ThinkingShouldBookAbleLyingOrderLanguageSidesExpressionLimitsShould HaveAimNonsenseBoth SidesThinkable
Book:Wittgenstein's Tractatus
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“You had to form for yourself a lucid language for the world, to overcome the battering of experience, to replace everyday life's pain and harshness and wretched dreariness with - no not with certainty but with an ignorance you could live with. Deep ignorance, but still a kind that knew its limits. The limits were crucial.”

WorldKindStillsPainFormLanguageIgnoranceLimitsOvercomingEverydayCertaintyCrucialEveryday LifeWretchedHarshnessBattering
Author:Gregory Benford
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“What causes [fragmentation] if not a need to act that specializes us and limits us to the horizon of a particular activity? Even if it turns out to be for the general interest (which generally isn't true), the activity that subordinates each of our aspects to a specific result suppresses our being as an entirety. Whoever acts substitutes a particular end for what he or she is, as a total being.”

IfsNeedsEndsTurnsCausesInterestResultsParticularActivityLimitsAspectSubstitutesHorizonSubordinatesEntiretyFragmentation
Author:Georges Bataille
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“The life of the spirit is the expression of Infinity and, as such, knows no artificial limits. True spirituality is not to be mistaken for an exclusive enthusiasm for some fad. It is not concerned with any "ism." When people seek spirituality apart from life, as if it had nothing to do with the material world, their search is futile.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWorldSpiritSpiritualityExpressionMaterialsLimitsConcernedEnthusiasmInfinityArtificialMistakenExclusiveFadsIsmsMaterial World
Author:Meher Baba
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“No conclusions can be more agreeable to scepticism than such as make discoveries concerning the weakness and narrow limits of human reason and capacity.”

HumansReasonLimitsWeaknessDiscoveryCapacityConclusionScepticismHuman Reason
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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“The soul, when accustomed to superfluous things, acquires a strong habit of desiring things which are neither necessary for the preservation of the individual nor for that of the species. This desire is without limit, whilst those which are necessary are few in number and restricted within certain limits; but what is superfluous is without end.”

SoulEndsDesireCertainIndividualStrongNumbersHabitLimitsSpeciesAcquirePreservationAccustomedSuperfluous
Book:The Guide for the Perplexed
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“The error of the ignorant goes so far as to say that God's power is insufficient, because he has given to this Universe the properties which they imagine cause these great evils, and which do not help all evil-disposed persons to obtain the evil which they seek, and to bring their evil souls to the aim of their desires, though these, as we have shown, are really without limit.”

PersonsSoulHelpingDesireUniverseEvilGivenCausesImagineLimitsAimPropertyErrorsIgnorantInsufficient
Book:The Guide for the Perplexed
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“They say that each generation inherits from those that have gone before; if this were so there would be no limit to man's improvements or to his power of reaching perfection. But he is very far from receiving intact that storehouse of knowledge which the centuries have piled up before him; he may perfect some inventions, but in others, he lags behind the originators, and a great many inventions have been lost entirely. What he gains on the one hand, he loses on the other.”

IfsMenMayHas BeensHandsWould BeLostLosesPerfectBehindsGoneGenerationsCenturyLimitsGainsPerfectionImprovementInventionGreat MenReachingReceivingLag
Author:Eugene Delacroix
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“It is a matter of course and of absolute necessity to the conduct of business, that any discretionary businessman must be free to deal or not to deal in any given case; to limit or withhold the equipment under his control, without reservation. Business discretion and business strategy, in fact, has no other means by to work out its aims. So that, in effect, all business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.”

MeanMatterFactsUseLastsCoursesGivenDealsCasesEffectsLimitsAbsolutesAimStrategyWork OutAnalysisBusinessmanEquipmentDiscretionReservationsSabotageBusiness StrategySagacity
Book:The Nature of Peace
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“Röntgen has familiarized us with an order of vibrations of extreme minuteness compared with the smallest waves with which we have hitherto been acquainted, and of dimensions comparable with the distances between the centers of the atoms of which the material universe is built up; and there is no reason to suppose that we have here reached the limit of frequency.”

ReasonOrderUniverseMaterialsLimitsBuiltDistanceWaveExtremesDimensionsNo ReasonAtomsSmallestVibrationsFrequency
Author:Wilhelm Rontgen
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“Scholars, who pride themselves on speaking their minds, often engage in a form of self-censorship which is called "realism." To be "realistic" in dealing with a problem is to work only among the alternatives which the most powerful in society put forth. It is as if we are all confined to a, b, c, or d in the multiple choice test, when we know there is another possible answer. American society, although it has more freedom of expression than most societies in the world, thus sets limits beyond which respectable people are not supposed to think or speak.”

PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsWorldMindSelfProblemFormChoicesSpeakAnswersPowerfulExpressionPrideLimitsTestsAlternativesMost PowerfulRealisticCensorshipScholarRealismMultipleConfinedRespectableFreedom Of ExpressionAmerican SocietyMultiple ChoiceSelf Censorship
Book:The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy
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“Conservatives are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rate to whatever appeals to the more timid mind. In looking forward, they lack the faith in the spontaneous forces of adjustment which makes the liberal accept changes without apprehension, even though he does not know how the necessary adaptations will be brought about.”

KnowsMindDoeUseGovernmentForceAcceptingKnow HowLimitsRateAppealsSpontaneousAdaptationLooking ForwardAdjustmentApprehensionAccepting Change
Author:Friedrich August von Hayek
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“[I]f we could have devised an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes, perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of human felicity already attained, and ceased to strive for further improvements.”

ShouldHumansHomePerfectQualityLimitsShould HaveStriveImprovementMoodQuantityProvidingArrangementsUnlimitedFelicity
Book:Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887: American literature
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“If we move away from the American tradition of lawyers defending those with whom they vehemently disagree -- as we temporarily did during the McCarthy period -- we weaken our commitment to the rule of law... So beware of an approach which limits advocacy to that which is approved by the standards of political correctness.”

IfsMovingLawPoliticalPoliticsJusticeResponsibilityPeriodsLimitsApproachStandardsRespectConscienceCommitmentTraditionLawyerToleranceHypocrisyDisagreeRule Of LawPolitical CorrectnessApprovedCorrectnessAdvocacyAmerican Tradition
Book:Letters to a Young Lawer (Easyread Large Edition)
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“We want to determine whether he understands the inherent limits that make an unelected Judiciary inferior to Congress or the President in making policy judgments. That, for example, a judge will never be in the best position to know what is in the national security interests of our country.”

KnowsWantCountryPresidentInterestSecurityPolicyExamplePositionJudgingLimitsJudgmentCongressDetermineOur CountryInherentInferiorsNational SecurityJudiciary
Author:Alberto Gonzales
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“With the disintegration of all that [Nietzsche] had revered, existence, to him, had become a desert in which only one thing remained, namely that which had relentlessly forced him into this path: truthfulness that knows no limits and is not subject to any condition.”

KnowsExistencePathOne ThingConditionsSubjectsLimitsDesertTruthfulnessDisintegration
Book:Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity
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“The underlying reason for convergence seems to be that all organisms are under constant scrutiny of natural selection and are also subject to the constraints of the physical and chemical factors that severely limit the action of all inhabitants of the biosphere. Put simply, convergence shows that in a real world not all things are possible.”

WorldRealReasonShowsSeemsActionNaturalSubjectsLimitsAll ThingsConstantFactorsChemicalsReal WorldOrganismsSelectionConstraintsNatural SelectionScrutinyConvergenceBiosphere
Author:Simon Conway Morris
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“Political philosophy is realistically utopian when it extends what are ordinarily thought to be the limits of practicable political possibility and, in so doing, reconciles us to our political and social condition. Our hope for the future of our society rests on the belief that the social world allows a reasonably just Society of Peoples.”

WorldPhilosophyPoliticalBeliefSocialConditionsPossibilityLimitsOur SocietyPolitical PhilosophyReconcileUtopianHope For The FutureSocial Conditions
Book:The Law of Peoples: With, The Idea of Public Reason Revisited
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“Obama has already demonstrated an extraordinary ability to change the limits of what one can say publicly. His greatest achievement up to now is that, in his refined non-provocative way, he has introduced into public speech topics which had hitherto been de facto unsayable: the continuing importance of race in politics, the positive role of atheists in public life, the necessity to talk with "enemies" like Iran or Hamas, and so on. This is just what US politics needs today more than anything, if it is to break out of its gridlock: new words which will change the way we think and act.”

IfsThinkingWayNeedsTodayAbilityRaceEnemyRolesBreakLimitsSpeechAchievementImportanceExtraordinaryAtheistIranContinuingTopicsPublic LifeRefinedProvocativeBreak OutHamasGreatest AchievementNew WordsAbility To ChangeGridlock
Author:Slavoj Žižek
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“One reason patients are reluctant to work in a therapy group is they fear that things will go too far, that the powerful therapist or the collective group might coerce them to lose control--to say or think or feel things that will be catastrophic. The therapist can make the group feel safer by allowing each patient to set his or her limits and by emphasizing the patient's control over every interaction.”

ThinkingFeelsReasonMightLosesPowerfulGroupsLimitsPatientTherapyCollectivesAllowingInteractionReluctantTherapistsCoerce
Book:Inpatient Group Psychotherapy
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“The question of perpetual copyright is, in my judgement, entitled to the full and favorable consideration of the Congress of an enlightened republic. There would seem to be every reason for the equitable protection, without limit as to time, of the unquestioned property rights of its citizens.”

ReasonSeemsRightsCitizensLimitsPropertyCongressProtectionJudgementConsiderationEnlightenedRepublicPerpetualEntitledProperty RightsCopyrightEquitable
Author:Florence Earle Coates
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