Quote of the Day for 2016-09-27

"Nothing does Reason more Right, than the Coolness of those that offer it: for Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers."

— William Penn (1644-1718) Some Fruits of Solitude in Reflections and Maxims, part 1 (1682)

Martin Luther King, Jr. during an SCLC meeting at B.B. Beamon's Restaurant in Atlanta (January 23, 1963) Photograph by Flip Schulke

Quote of the Day for 2016-09-26

"Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth."

— Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) Minima Moralia, section 143 (1951) translated by E.F.N. Jephcott (1974)

Fall of the Magician engraving by Pieter van der Heyden (1565) after Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Quote of the Day for 2016-09-08

"An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue."

— Frances Wright (1795-1852) A Few Days in Athens, volume 2, chapter 14 (1822)

"Why not go the limit?" by Harry Grant Dart in Puck magazine (March 18, 1908)

Quote of the Day for 2016-09-03

"The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is."

— Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014) "Leaving School—II," The London Magazine (May 1963)

Dick Cavett's Watergate on location in the Senate Watergate Committee hearing room (August 1, 1973) left to right: Senator Herman Talmadge, Senator Daniel Inouye, Senator Lowell Weicker, Dick Cavett, and Senator Howard Baker

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-01

"We do not know the truth. But sometimes we get a glimpse of the shadow of the truth. And where there is a shadow, somewhere there must be light."

— Eric Mervyn Lindsay (1907-1974) Quoted in The Irish Astronomical Journal (1975)

Hubble Space Telescope image of the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula (January 7, 2015)

Quote of the Day for 2016-05-29

"Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it had been discovered before. Lastly they say they always believed it."

— Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) Quoted in Harper's Bazaar (August 6, 1870)

Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition by Cristiano Banti (1857)

Quote of the Day for 2016-05-20

"Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true."

— Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "Recent Work on the Principles of Mathematics," The International Monthly (July 1901)

The Flammarion Engraving by an unknown artist, from L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (1888)

Quote of the Day for 2016-05-15

"Defend your opinion only if it can be shown to be true, not because it is your opinion."

— Jack McDevitt (1935-    ) Omega, chapter 33 (2003)

Artist is unknown (cira 2013). If anyone has any information about them, please contact me, and I will give proper credit

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-22

"Constant and frequent questioning is the first key to wisdom. … For through doubting we are led to inquire, and by inquiry we perceive the truth."

— Peter Abelard (1079-1142) Sic et Non, Prologue (1120)

Abelard and his Pupil Heloise by Edmund Leighton (1882)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-21

"For a ballad's a thing you expect to find lies in."

— Samuel Lover (1797-1868) "Paddy Blake's Echo"

Adele Astaire and her brother Fred in a promotional picture for Lady, Be Good (1926)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-15

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."

— Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Letter to Jost Winteler, 1901

Pope Benedict XVI blessing the crowd in St. Peter’s Square (October 10, 2012)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-29

"Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. She is said to lie at the bottom of a well, for the very reason, perhaps, that whoever looks down in search of her sees his own image at the bottom, and is persuaded not only that he has seen the goddess, but that she is far better looking than he had imagined."

— James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) Inaugural address on assuming the presidency of The Birmingham and Midland Institute in Birmingham, England, October 6, 1884

The Truth, by Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1870)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-18

"I learned early to understand that there is no such condition in human affairs as absolute truth. There is only truth as people see it, and truth, even in fact, may be kaleidoscopic in its variety."

— Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) My Several Worlds

Illustration of the Earth as an inverse toroid that is both flat and conforms to the observations of modern science (1893)

Quote of the Day for 2015-11-06

"He, who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own Sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all."

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) Aids to Reflection, "Moral and Religious Aphorisms," Aphorism 25

Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker during a PTL broadcast (circa 1986)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-01

"Autobiography—that unrivalled vehicle for telling the truth about other people."

— Philip Guedalla (1889-1944) "Biographers and Their Victims," Debate with A.G. Gardiner at The London School of Economics, June 1923

For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington by Donald Regan, White House Chief of Staff under Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1987.