#edge

Authority without wisdom is like a heavy ax without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish. ↗

— Anne Bradstreet

#ax #bruise #edge #fitter #heavy

Tell me one last thing," said Harry. "Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?" Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry's ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure. "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real? ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#dumbledore #knowledgeable #mind #philosophy #reality

Many things the gods achieve beyond our judgement,'" said the sorrowful girl. "'What we thought is not confirmed and what we thought not God contives. ↗

— John Irving

#knowledge #religion #thought #faith

They had applied their doubts to the very head that had introduced doubt as a tool for advancing knowledge. And in the end they gave the head a nod. ↗

— Russell Shorto

#head #knowledge #faith

God did not mean us to be ignorant. He left us this marvelous universe to decipher and understand. ↗

— James Targett

#god #ignorance #knowledge #marvels #universe

The agnostic does not simply say, "l do not know." He goes another step, and he says, with great emphasis, that you do not know. He insists that you are trading on the ignorance of others, and on the fear of others. He is not satisfied with saying that you do not know, -- he demonstrates that you do not know, and he drives you from the field of fact -- he drives you from the realm of reason -- he drives you from the light, into the darkness of conjecture -- into the world of dreams and shadows, and he compels you to say, at last, that your faith has no foundation in fact. ↗

— Robert G. Ingersoll

#atheism #fact #facts #knowledge #reason

Our standard rate. A doubloon a day." It was generous. More than generous--some families would put him up for a week for a single coin. "Half a doubloon a day," she said. "No, you see, the idea behind bargaining is that you ask for a larger amount. ↗

— Ilona Andrews

#declan #ilona-andrews #on-the-edge #rose #family

I was also sick of my neighbors, as most Parisians are. I now knew every second of the morning routine of the family upstairs. At 7:00 am alarm goes off, boom, Madame gets out of bed, puts on her deep-sea divers’ boots, and stomps across my ceiling to megaphone the kids awake. The kids drop bags of cannonballs onto the floor, then, apparently dragging several sledgehammers each, stampede into the kitchen. They grab their chunks of baguette and go and sit in front of the TV, which is always showing a cartoon about people who do nothing but scream at each other and explode. Every minute, one of the kids cartwheels (while bouncing cannonballs) back into the kitchen for seconds, then returns (bringing with it a family of excitable kangaroos) to the TV. Meanwhile the toilet is flushed, on average, fifty times per drop of urine expelled. Finally, there is a ten-minute period of intensive yelling, and at 8:15 on the dot they all howl and crash their way out of the apartment to school.” (p.137) ↗

— Stephen Clarke

#bed #cannonball #cartoon #cartwheel #ceiling

It is not enough to say that we cannot know or judge because all the information is not in. The process of gathering knowledge does not lead to knowing. A child's world spreads only a little beyond his understanding while that of a great scientist thrusts outward immeasurably. An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions. So we draw worlds and fit them like tracings against the world about us, and crumple them when they do not fit and draw new ones. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#scientists #family

The family is the cradle of the world"s misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. ↗

— Don DeLillo

#family #information #knowledge #family