Quotations
Wisdom of the Wise
"The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation."
Isaac D'Israeli
Good quotations are like poetry; they capture and communicate thoughts and ideas in a concise and effective way; they inform and inspire, and perhaps more importantly they help reveal assumptions, values and beliefs that underlie the ways in which we interpret the world around us. And quotes are timeless: some of those we have used are over 1,000 years old.
We hope you will find our eclectic selection suitably informative, inspiring or insightful: they come from some of the world's greatest thinkers, writers and statesmen and women. [1]
Do you have a favourite quote
about information, wisdom, propaganda, truth, lies, etc. that you'd like to share with us? If you have / do, please check it's correct, unlike the adjacent quote by Yoda (from George Lucas's Star Wars) superimposed on a picture of the Dalai Lama... If in doubt, check out Quote Investigator.
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1 Words, Information & Communication
"Words differently arranged have different meanings, and meanings differently arranged have a different effect." Blaise Pascal
"The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they’ve been in." Dennis Potter
“The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through." Sydney J Harris
"Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders." Ronald Reagan
"The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they’ve been in." Dennis Potter
“The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through." Sydney J Harris
"Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders." Ronald Reagan
2 On Truth
“The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.” Carl Sagan
"Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality." Linus Pauling
“Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.” Richard Feynman
"Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense." Leo Rosten
“The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe.” Voltaire
"Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality." Linus Pauling
“Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.” Richard Feynman
"Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense." Leo Rosten
“The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe.” Voltaire
Albert Einstein advised that if you are out to describe the truth
“leave elegance to the tailor;” and André Gide said
“the colour of truth is grey” and advised people to
"believe those who are seeking the truth” but
“doubt those who find it.”
"Politicians will respect, rather than manipulate, reality only if the public cares about the truth and punishes politicians when it catches them in deliberate deception." George Soros
3 Psychology, Attitude & Opinion
“If one were to attempt to identify a single problematic aspect of human reasoning that deserves attention above all others, the confirmation bias would have to be among the candidates for consideration. Many have written about this bias, and it appears to be sufficiently strong and pervasive that one is led to wonder whether the bias, by itself, might account for a significant fraction of the disputes, altercations, and misunderstandings that occur among individuals, groups, and nations." Raymond S Nickerson
"There is a cult of ignorance... nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” Isaas Asimov
"We live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups. I ask, in my writing, 'What is real?' Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms." Philip K Dick
"We live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups. I ask, in my writing, 'What is real?' Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms." Philip K Dick
“A shared sense of reality, a counter to conspiracies, and some basic consensus are vital to a healthy democracy, a truly post-truth world is in none of our interests.” James Ball
"Digital technologies privilege our impulses over our intentions. They are increasingly designed to exploit our psychological vulnerabilities in order to direct us toward goals that may or may not align with our own. In the short term, this can distract us from doing the things we want to do. In the longer term, however, it can distract us from living the lives we want to live, or, even worse, undermine our capacities for reflection and self-regulation, making it harder, in the words of philosopher Harry Frankfurt, to ‘want what we want to want.’ A primary effect of digital technologies is thus to undermine the operation and even development of the human will. This militates against the possibility of all forms of self-determination at both individual and collective levels, including all forms of politics worth having." James Williams (former Google
advertising strategist)
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Martin Luther King Jr
“There is no shame in not knowing, the problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance.” Neil deGrasse Tyson
4 On Self-Deception & Unconscious Bias
“The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe.” Voltaire
“Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.” Ludwig Wittgenstein
“We all know dogmatists who are more concerned about holding their opinions than about investigating their truth. ... if they are mistaken, they will never discover it; they have condemned themselves to perpetual error. Human beings (including myself) sometimes use their beliefs for wish-fulfillment. Too often we believe what we want to be true.” David L Wolfe
“Humanity had the fatal tendency to shape truth to our beliefs rather than beliefs to the Truth.”
Frank Turek
"People are often unconscious of some of the mechanisms that naturally occur in them in a biased way. For example, if I do something that is beneficial to you or to others, I will use the active voice: I did this, I did that, then benefits rained down on you. But if I did something that harmed others, I unconsciously switch to a passive voice: this happened, then that happened, then unfortunately you suffered these costs." Robert Trivers
5 Fake News, Misinformation & Propaganda
"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made." Groucho Marx
"Lies are the social equivalent of toxic waste: Everyone is potentially harmed by their spread." Sam Harris
"Lies are the social equivalent of toxic waste: Everyone is potentially harmed by their spread." Sam Harris
“Thanks to Donald Trump, ordinary Japanese people understand exactly what fake news is.” John Middleton, (FactCheck Initiative Japan)
"Untruthful articles can and do influence the way people think, act and vote. Fake news sites aren’t required (or likely) to disclose their falseness the way a satirical news site would, which makes it easier to mistake them for the truth. And while previously only professional news organisations had the means to reach people via papers and TV, now anyone can reach millions through social media, YouTube and the internet... The gates are wide open, and there’s no one guarding them."
Wikitribune
(June 2017)
"The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth." Garry Kasparov
"We came from an era of dominant news organisations, often perceived as oracles of fact. We've moved to a marketplace where quality journalism competes on an equal footing with raucous opinion, passionate advocacy, and the masquerading expression of variously motivated bad actors."
Richard Gingras
"News is like food, and it should be treated like food by all parties involved in its consumption. Healthy food contributes to a healthy body; good news contributes to a healthy mind. Bad food leads to a sickly body, and false or fake news contributes to an ignorant, uncritical mind.” Sam Labun
“Beware false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.” George Bernard Shaw
“Beware false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.” George Bernard Shaw
“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”
Edward Snowden
“From cyberbullying to sexting to prowling predators, the Information Age has brought with it a new spectrum of risks and threats for parents to guard their children against, and now that spectrum of threats has expanded to include child identity theft.” Richard Power
“We should treat personal electronic data with the same care and respect as weapons-grade plutonium – it is dangerous, long-lasting and once it has leaked there’s no getting it back.”
Cory Doctorow
“Security in IT is like locking your house or car – it doesn’t stop the bad guys, but if it’s good enough they may move on to an easier target.” Paul Herbka
“Torture the data, and it will confess to anything.” Ronald Coase
“Only people with dull lives can afford to forego privacy.” Jan Chipchase
"Web browsing is hostile to privacy and security. It has one of the worst security risk profiles – [such as] 'allow arbitrary third parties to run code on my computer' – coupled with protocols that were never designed to protect metadata. Tor Browser is the least-worst option for protecting your privacy in a web browsing context, in its highest security mode."
Sarah Jamie Lewis [Open Privacy Research Society]
7 Information Warfare
“World War Three will be a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.” Marshall McLuhan [Culture Is Our Business, 1970]
A new type of war has emerged, in which armed warfare has given up its decisive place in the achievement of the military and political objectives of war to another kind of warfare — information warfare.” V. Kvachkov [Russia’s Special Purpose Forces]
“One side is handicapped [wanting to stick to the facts], and the other side seems not to be, and that’s always a difficult playing field to be on.” Ben Nimmo [3]
“One side is handicapped [wanting to stick to the facts], and the other side seems not to be, and that’s always a difficult playing field to be on.” Ben Nimmo [3]
“In the information age, it’s not just whose army wins but whose story wins."
Joseph S Nye
8 Politics & The Future
“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.” John F Kennedy
"The public will believe a simple lie rather than a complex truth." Alexis de Tocqueville
“'Our media, our tools, and our politics are being leveraged to help breed polarization by countless actors who can leverage these systems for personal, economic, and ideological gain. Sometimes, it’s for the lulz. Sometimes, the goals are much more disturbing.' In short: We are being used." Dana Boyd
“Not all viewpoints are created equal. Demonstrably racist, sexist, homophobic views are not worthy of debate because there's literally nothing about them with any truthful or factual substance.”
"Politicians will respect, rather than manipulate, reality only if the public cares about the truth and punishes politicians when it catches them in deliberate deception." George Soros
“'Our media, our tools, and our politics are being leveraged to help breed polarization by countless actors who can leverage these systems for personal, economic, and ideological gain. Sometimes, it’s for the lulz. Sometimes, the goals are much more disturbing.' In short: We are being used." Dana Boyd
“Not all viewpoints are created equal. Demonstrably racist, sexist, homophobic views are not worthy of debate because there's literally nothing about them with any truthful or factual substance.”
Channel Awesome
"Politicians will respect, rather than manipulate, reality only if the public cares about the truth and punishes politicians when it catches them in deliberate deception." George Soros
“The world is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don't do anything about it.” Albert Einstein
"This business of making people conscious of what is happening outside their own small circle is one of the major problems of our time.” George Orwell
"The great conflict of the 21st century will not be between the West and terrorism... [but] between modern civilization and anti-modernists; between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe their allegiance and identity to a higher authority; between those who give priority to life in this world and those who believe that human life is mere preparation for existence beyond life; between those who believe in science, reason, and logic and those who believe that truth is revealed through Scripture and religious dogma." Robert Reich
“World War Three will be a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.” Marshall McLuhan
“We must learn to recognize that all social groups — regardless of religious belief or lack thereof — bring something to the table that is worthy. Coming together to pursue peace, justice, equality, and all the other values we hold in-kind, we find that if we failed to partner together we would be dismissing friends and allies on a wide array of issues.” Benjamin Corey
“World War Three will be a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.” Marshall McLuhan
“We must learn to recognize that all social groups — regardless of religious belief or lack thereof — bring something to the table that is worthy. Coming together to pursue peace, justice, equality, and all the other values we hold in-kind, we find that if we failed to partner together we would be dismissing friends and allies on a wide array of issues.” Benjamin Corey
Please Note
We cannot vouch for the accuracy or authorship of every quotation, and do not necessarily agree with the views and opinions of their authors. Many of the above quotes have come from the internet, and we may well have copied mistakes too. If you spot anything amiss, please let us know.
The Internet is great but much of the information it contains is “subject to the same rules and regulations as conversation at a bar” (George Lundberg).
The adjacent quote, "information is the currency of democracy," attributed to Thomas Jefferson, is highly plausible, but it's a FAKE. [It fooled me...]
We have included a few quotes that seem simply too witty or ironical to exclude. We sincerely hope that none of these cause offence. Many of the issues we are concerned about on this website are clearly no laughing matter.
The adjacent quote, "information is the currency of democracy," attributed to Thomas Jefferson, is highly plausible, but it's a FAKE. [It fooled me...]
We have included a few quotes that seem simply too witty or ironical to exclude. We sincerely hope that none of these cause offence. Many of the issues we are concerned about on this website are clearly no laughing matter.
Notes
1 On a personal note, I am passionate collector of quotes: I treasure them for their insight, wit and humour, so I make no apology for using many quotes on this website. I think it’s important to remember and celebrate the contribution that others have made to our knowledge / thinking... And for me, as a Humanist, being remembered by others is the closest anyone can get to immortality.
3 Ben Nimmo, Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council, was speaking about Russia’s disinformation campaign following the Skripal poisonings in Salisbury [BBC Radio 4, Today, 7Apr2018].
