Necessitation Quotes & Sayings

Bait the hook well. This fish will bite. — William Shakespeare

Painters were also attorneys, happy storytellers of anecdote, psychologists, botanists, zoologists, archaeologists, engineers, but there were no creative painters. — Kazimir Malevich

Freedom in the practical sense is the independence of the power of choice from necessitation by impulses of sensibility — Immanuel Kant

Nothing comes of severity if there be no leanings towards a change of heart. And if there be natural leanings towards a change of heart, what need for severity? — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

A will whose maxims necessarily coincide with the laws of autonomy is a holy will, good absolutely. The dependence of a will not absolutely good on the principle of autonomy (moral necessitation) is obligation. This, then, cannot be applied to a holy being. The objective necessity of actions from obligation is called duty. From what has just been said, it is easy to see how it happens that, although the conception of duty implies subjection to the law, we yet ascribe a certain dignity and sublimity to the person who fulfills all his duties. There is not, indeed, any sublimity in him, so far as he is subject to the moral law; but inasmuch as in regard to that very law he is likewise a legislator, and on that account alone subject to it, he has sublimity. We have also shown above that neither fear nor inclination, but simply respect for the law, is the spring which can give actions a moral worth. — Immanuel Kant

Believing is seeing. It's much more effective than the old notion that seeing is believing. — Terrence E. Deal

Robert Oppenheimer used to tell of the pioneer mysteries of building reliable Geiger counters that had low background noise. Among his friends, he said, there were two schools of thought. One school firmly held that the final step before one sealed off the Geiger tube was to peel a banana and wave the skin three times, sharply to the left.
The other school was equally confident that success would follow if one waved the banana peel twice to the left and then, once, smartly to the right. (My counters were unbelievably bad because I didn't use either of these techniques.) — Luis W. Alvarez

Who can tell truth from falsehood any more?
I say it, and you feel it in your hearts:
no man or woman on this big small earth.
How should our sages miss the mark of life,
and our most skillful players lose the game?
your hearts will tell you, as my heart has told me:
because all know, and no one understands. — E. E. Cummings