Thursday, October 12, 2006

Quotations #085

"Rabbi Elazar ben (son of) Shamua said, the honor of your student should be as dear to you as your own; the honor of your colleague should be as the fear of your [Torah] teacher; and the fear of your teacher should be as the fear of Heaven." -- Pirkei Avot Chapter 4, Mishna 15(a)

"No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense." -- Lord Salisbury, 15 June 1877

"An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less." -- Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia U. commencement, attributed. [concludes in some versions "until he knows nearly everything about almost nothing."]

"I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor hate them, but to understand them." -- Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Politicus (1677)

"Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn." -- George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah (1921)

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