"The reasonable man adapts to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."GeorgeBernard Shaw
"War is peace, love is hate, truth is lies."
George Orwell (1984)
"Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy."
John Dewey
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
Michel De Montaigne
"Civilisation is a race between education and catastrophe"
H.G. Wells
"The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked..."
H. L. Mencken
"My only policy is to profess evil and do good."
George Bernard Shaw
"Sometimes when the laws are so cruel, so dangerous and so bad, one has to make a stand."
Australian solicitor, John Marsden, commenting on his arrest in 1967 for improper behaviour in a public place.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action."
Goethe"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
Douglas Adams
"Indeed, there is less reason to be puzzled by the fact that there are so many neurotic people than by the phenomenon that most people are relatively healthy in spite of the many adverse influences they are exposed to."
Erich Fromm
"Had I been present at the creation of the world, I would have proposed some improvements."
Alfonso X (Alfonso the Wise; 1226-1284; King of Castile)
"As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power."
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
"If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm."
Marcus Aurelius
Lots more to follow