This is our monthly thread for collecting these little gems and pearls of wisdom, rationality-related quotes you've seen recently, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages, and which might be handy to link to in one of our discussions.
- Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.
- No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
I'm continually amused by the abundance of quotes here on LW from sundry wingnuts and theists, some of which are quite good. We've had Jack Chick, Ted Kaczynski, CS Lewis (howdya like that reference class, Lewis), GK Chesterton, and that crazy "Einstein was wrong!" guy.
Maybe being a contrarian in anything whatsoever helps one to break through the platitudes and cached thoughts that ordinary folks seem to bog down in whenever they try to think.
There's also a certain fun challenge in looking for jewels among the fecal matter. Rationalist aphorisms by Voltaire or Russell are a regular feature of their writing, and have been quoted in books and articles for decades or centuries, but a pearl of wisdom by a fideist is a tough find and most likely unknown to other LW readers.
Heh. Of all goddamn things to be a hipster about, "rationality quotes" has got to be one hell of a weird choice.