Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.”
Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”
--Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
“Denice, be wary of people who have answers to your problems. Those answers I have found for myself—the things that strike you as wisdom—are not
your answers, and they are only my answers
today. Tomorrow I will be a different person with different needs. The world and its people are too complex for any system of beliefs to fully address their complexity. The map does not hold; it can't. When you learn something for yourself, hold to it; but do not expect it to work for others. Sometimes it will. More often it will not.”
--Daniel Keys Moran, The Last Dancer
For governing a country well
there is nothing better than moderation.
The mark of a moderate man
is freedom from his own ideas.
--Lao Tzu, The Book of the Way
He had spent all his life avoiding decisions, confident in his subordination that his hypothetical decisions would have surpassed those actually reached by the men and women he served. He had mistaken hesitancy for judiciousness and had owned the luxury of this mistake for so long as he was not called upon to actually judge. In hindsight (which he had similarly mistaken for wisdom), he always knew that he had ascertained the proper course. The error lay in not recognizing that proper course among so many others also ascertained.
--Michael Flynn, The Wreck of The River of Stars
In Part One of formal scientific method, which is the statement of the problem, the main skill is in stating absolutely no more than you are positive you know. It is much better to enter a statement "Solve Problem: Why doesn't cycle work?" which sounds dumb but is correct, than it is to enter a statement "Solve Problem: What is wrong with the electrical system?" when you don't absolutely
know the trouble is
in the electrical system. What you should state is "Solve Problem: What is wrong with cycle?" and then state as the first entry of Part Two: "Hypothesis Number One: The trouble is in the electrical system." You think of as many hypothesis as you can, then you design experiments to test them to see which are true and which are false.
--Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They
know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
--Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
“Doubt, Lady, is the chastity of the mind, […]”
--Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
“There's faith that knows itself as faith, Proyas, and there's faith that confuses itself for knowledge. The first embraces uncertainty, acknowledges the mysteriousness of the God. It begets compassion and tolerance. Who can entirely condemn when they're not entirely certain they're in the right? But the second, Proyas, the second embraces certainty and only pays lip service to the God's mystery. It begets intolerance, hatred, violence…”
--R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness that Comes Before
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the beginning of chaos.
--Lao Tzu, The Book of the Way
In far too much traditional fantasy, and SF, and -- for that matter -- every branch of literature [...], the moral framework underlying the story is simply a postulate; that is to say, it's given that Some Things Are Evil, and Some Things Are Good. What these Things might be will differ from genre to genre -- and even from story to story -- but one distinction is clear: crap writing of all varieties is crammed with the premise (popularized by C.S. Lewis, who in most other ways behaved as if he were entirely sober) that "Good People simply Know, down deep, the difference between Right and Wrong."
One of the great uses of literature in general is to clue people in to the simple fact that this "Down-Deep Knowing" is only prejudice -- and that if you do believe in such imaginary abilities, it inevitably follows that everyone who disagrees with you (no matter how sincere and potent their own "Down-Deep Knowing") must be:
a) evil and must be destroyed;
b) deceived and must be enlightened;
c) liars whose hypocrisy must be exposed.
I don't think anyone in this country these days needs to be reminded just how pernicious such attitudes are.
Conviction, no matter how narcotic its depth, simply did not make true. This was a hard lesson, made all the harder by its astounding conspicousness. Despite the exhortations of kings and generals, despite the endless lays, belief unto death was cheap. After all, the Fanim threw themselves against the spears of their enemies as readily as the Inrithi.
Someone had to be deluded. So what ensured that that someone was
someone else? Given the manifest frailty of men, given the long succession of delusions that was their history, what could be more preposterous than claiming oneself the least deluded, let alone privy to the absolute?
And to make such obvious conceit the grounds of condemnation … of murder …
--R. Scott Bakker, The Thousandfold Thought
As Einstein said, common sense—non-weirdness—is just a bundle of prejuidices acquired before the age of eighteen. The tests of truth are logical consistency, agreement with experience, and economy of explanation.
--Robert M. Pirsig, Lila
That is precisely what common sense is for, to be jarred into uncommon sense. One of the chief services which mathematics has rendered the human race in the past century is to put "common sense" where it belongs, on the topmost shelf next to the dusty canister labelled "discarded nonsense."
--Eric Temple Bell
“There are people who love birds so much they free them. There are others who love them so much they cage them.”
--Gene Wolfe, Caldé of the Long Sun
“What distinguishes a flower from a weed is only—and exactly—this: the choice of the gardener.”
--Matthew Woodring Stover, Traitor
What frightens me when I travel is not that so many men possess customs and creeds so different from my own. Nay, what frightens me is that they think them as natural and as obvious as I think my own.
--R. Scott Bakker, The Thousandfold Thought
When strangers meet, great allowances should be made for differences of custom and training.
--Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune
