Jon Elster famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

If the world were to end tomorrow and we could choose to save only one thing as the explanation and memorial to who we were, then we couldn't do better than the Natural History Museum, although it wouldn't contain a single human. The systematic Linnean order, the vast inquisitiveness and range of collated knowledge and beauty would tell all that is the best of us.
If nobody said anything unless he knew what he was talking about, a ghastly hush would descend upon the earth.
We must not overlook the role that extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent or self-satisfied; they are, if sound, the spearhead of progress. If they are fundamentally wrong, free discussion will in time put an end to them.
The tree of research must be fed from time to time with the blood of bean-counters, for it is its natural manure.
Why don't you light that candle ?
Harm can come about without will or action. But will and action can avert harm.
Action is the only reality; not only reality, but morality as well.
I had drawings that were the first time that mathematics was put into visual form.
... preliminary accounting, banking and surveying (known as arithmetic, algebra and geometry).
Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved propositions about "any" things or about "some" things, without specifications of definite particular things.

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