Epistemocracy Quotes & Sayings

For as we would wish that a painter who is to draw a beautiful face, in which there is yet some imperfection, should neither wholly leave out, nor yet too pointedly express what is defective, because this would deform it, and that spoil the resemblance; so since it is hard, or indeed perhaps impossible, to show the life of a man wholly free from blemish, in all that is excellent we must follow truth exactly, and give it fully; any lapses or faults that occur, through human passions or political necessities, we may regard rather as the shortcomings of some particular virtue, than as the natural effects of vice; and may be content without introducing them, curiously and officiously, into our narrative, if it be but out of tenderness to the weakness of nature, which has never succeeded in producing any human character so perfect in virtue as to be pure from all admixture and open to no criticism. — Plutarch

Someone with a low degree of epistemic arrogance is not too visible, like a shy person at a cocktail party. We are not predisposed to respect humble people, those who try to suspend judgement. Now contemplate epistemic humility. Think of someone heavily introspective, tortured by the awareness of his own ignorance. He lacks the courage of the idiot, yet has the rare guts to say "I don't know." He does not mind looking like a fool or, worse, an ignoramus. He hesitates, he will not commit, and he agonizes over the consequences of being wrong. He introspects, introspects, and introspects until he reaches physical and nervous exhaustion.
This does not necessarily mean he lacks confidence, only that he holds his own knowledge to be suspect. I will call such a person an epistemocrat; the province where the laws are structured with this kind of human fallibility in mind I will can an epistemocracy. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Reason had no place to crash once Emotion came to town. — Thomm Quackenbush

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover. — Arthur Symons

Minutes pass, and between the minutes, June is slashing out the possibilities. She is narrowing her sister's life down to its essentials. The first to go is the vet's office where May might have worked, which is a loss, but the next to go is the mansion that May has been inside of in her dreams, a terrible, vast, cold place where the pictures are old and of other families. And so it is a relief to see it go, slashed out, burned to the ground with the hot friction of June's pencil. Then there is the loss of all possible sons, which is a tremendous relief, and then the crossing out of husbands, one by one, save one. — Emily Ruskovich

Be yourself; everyone else is taken. — Oscar Wilde

You are so bizarre, even for a human."
"Thanks. — Stephenie Meyer

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. — Anonymous

For a majority of women it remains difficult to reconcile increasingly burdensome maternal responsibilities with personal fulfillment. — Elisabeth Badinter

Among novelists I know, no one is more ambitious than I am. — Jonathan Franzen

Big things have small beginnings. — Michael Fassbender