Positivistic Quotes & Sayings

On the other hand, Protestantism's shedding away of authority, as evidenced by my mother's proclamation that I needn't go to church or listen to a preacher to achieve salvation, inspires self-reliance - along with a dangerous disregard for expertise. So the impulse that leads to democracy can also be the downside of democracy - namely, a suspicion of people who know what they are talking about. It's why in U.S. presidential elections the American people will elect a wisecracking good ol'boy who's fun in a malt shop instead of a serious thinker who actually knows some of the pompous, brainy stuff that might actually get fewer people laid off or killed. — Sarah Vowell

When you get right down to it, there is no dignified way to go, be it decomposition, incineration, dissection, tissue digestion, or composting. They're all, bottom line, a little disagreeable. It takes the careful application of a well-considered euphemism - burial, cremation, anatomical gift-giving, water reduction, ecological funeral - to bring it to the point of acceptance. — Mary Roach

One day, God said 'Let there be prey.' And he created pigeons, rabbits, lambs and Gene Wilder. — Mel Brooks

In the festival which concludes the period, before they go to the temple, both wives and children fall on their knees before their husbands or parents and confess everything in which they have either erred or failed in their duty, and beg pardon for it. — Thomas More

My war - and I have yet to win a decisive battle - is with the modes of thought and conditioned feelings that prevail in psychology and therefore also in the way we think and feel about our being. Of these conditions none are more tyrannical than the convictions that clamp the mind and heart into positivistic science (geneticism and computerism), economics (bottom-line capitalism), and single-minded faith (fundamentalism). — James Hillman

Cricket is my passion; it is my first love. So I will not act in my movies, as they will just be a side business for me. — Harbhajan Singh

Art could be said to be a symbol of the universe, being linked with that absolute spiritual truth which is hidden from us in our positivistic, pragmatic activities. — Andrei Tarkovsky

I began to expand my personal service in the church, and to search more diligently for a closer relationship with God among my different business, professional and political interests. — Jimmy Carter

As soon as a thought or word becomes a tool, one can dispense with actually 'thinking' it, that is, with going through the logical acts involved in verbal formulation of it. As has been pointed out, often and correctly, the advantage of mathematics the model of all neo-positivistic thinking lies in just this 'intellectual economy.' Complicated logical operations are carried out without actual performance of the intellectual acts upon which the mathematical and logical symbols are based ... Reason ... becomes a fetish, a magic entity that is accepted rather than intellectually experienced. — Max Horkheimer

If you have an argument with someone and you sulk, sometimes you don't want to speak to them. But it is important to keep your friends close to you and do the right things. — Jermain Defoe

My basic approach is to recognize that mainstream legal theories of contract have been muddied by unlibertarian and positivistic conceptions of law and rights. Questions about what rights are "alienable" or not, loose talk about how promises should be "binding," etc., highlight the need for clarity in this area. In my view, to sort these issues out one needs a very clear and consistent understanding of the nature of property rights and ownership. — Stephan Kinsella

Everyone performs bad actions ... A bad person is someone who does not lament his bad actions. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity. — Eric Hoffer

Every man is a potential genius until he does something. — Herbert Beerbohm Tree