„The normal man, he does not care much what he does except that he should eat and sleep and make love. But the scientist is intensely religious—he is so religious that he will not accept quarter-truths, because they are an insult to his faith.
He wants that everything should be subject to inexorable laws. He is equal opposed to the capitalists who t'ink their silly money-grabbing is a system, and to liberals who t'ink man is not a fighting animal; he takes both the American booster and the European aristocrat, and he ignores all their blithering. Ignores it! All of it! He hates the preachers who talk their fables, but he iss not too kindly to the anthropologists and historians who can only make guesses, yet they have the nerf to call themselves scientists! Oh, yes, he is a man that all nice good-natured people should naturally hate!“

„The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful.“

—  Henri Poincaré, kniha Science and Method

Part I. Ch. 1 : The Selection of Facts, p. 22
Science and Method (1908)
Kontext: The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. I am not speaking, of course, of the beauty which strikes the senses, of the beauty of qualities and appearances. I am far from despising this, but it has nothing to do with science. What I mean is that more intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp.

„There is no gentleman in America, but he who feels that every man is his equal in natural right, and who does not know that he is cheated if every man does not have fair play.“

—  George William Curtis American writer 1824 - 1892

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

„He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.“

—  Pablo Picasso Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer 1881 - 1973

„Man can certainly keep on lying (and he does so); but he cannot make truth falsehood. He can certainly rebel (he does so); but he can accomplish nothing which abolishes the choice of God.“

—  Karl Barth, kniha Church Dogmatics

2:2 <!-- p. 317 -->
Paraphrased variant: Man can certainly flee from God... but he cannot escape him. He can certainly hate God and be hateful to God … but he cannot change into its opposite the eternal love of God which triumphs even in his hate.
Quoted in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1998) by James Beasley Simpson.
Church Dogmatics (1932–1968)
Kontext: Man can certainly keep on lying (and he does so); but he cannot make truth falsehood. He can certainly rebel (he does so); but he can accomplish nothing which abolishes the choice of God. He can certainly flee from God (he does so); but he cannot escape Him. He can certainly hate God and be hateful to God (he does and is so); but he cannot change into its opposite the eternal love of God which triumphs even in His hate. He can certainly give himself to isolation (he does so — he thinks, wills and behaves godlessly, and is godless); but even in his isolation he must demonstrate that which he wishes to controvert — the impossibility of playing the "individual" over against God. He may let go of God, but God does not let go of him.

„Understanding sometimes is not enough to explain something. Only faith is sufficient. The Führer in Nuremberg said: 'Woe to him who does not believe!' He who does not believe has no soul. He is empty. He has no ideals. He has nothing to live for. He has no sunshine, no light, no joy in life. He is a poor, poor man. What is wealth? What are possessions? What does it all mean? Problems come despite them, only faith is left. Woe to him who does not believe!“

—  Robert Ley Nazi politician 1890 - 1945

Speech given on November 3, 1936. Quoted in Wir alle helfen dem Führer "Schicksal — ich glaube!" (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1937), pages 103-114

„It does not matter much what a man hates provided he hates something.“

—  Samuel Butler novelist 1835 - 1902

Hating
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

„A man who wants to find out who he really is should try watching the woman he loves as she dances the tango with a maestro.“

—  Clive James Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist 1939 - 2019

Ernesto Sábato
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)

„A man who wants to find out who he really is should try watching the woman he loves as she dances the tango with a maestro.“

—  Ernesto Sábato Argentine writer, painter and physicist 1911 - 2011

Ernesto Sábato in: Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time, (2007)

„What odds does it make to the man who lives within Nature's bounds, whether he ploughs a hundred acres or a thousand?“

—  Horace, kniha Satires

Book I, satire i, line 48
Satires (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)

„He who believes in goodness has the essence of all faith. He is a man "of cheerful yesterdays and confident to-morrows."“

—  James Freeman Clarke American theologian and writer 1810 - 1888

Zdroj: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 287.

„If the Superior Man is not serious, then he will not inspire awe in others. If he is not learned, then he will not be on firm ground. He takes loyalty and good faith to be of primary importance, and has no friends who are not of equal (moral) caliber. When he makes a mistake, he doesn't hesitate to correct it.“

—  Confucius Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher -551 - -479 pred n. l.

Originál: (zh_Hant) 君子不重，則不威。學則不固。主忠信。无友不如己者。過，則勿憚改。
Zdroj: The Analects, Other chapters

„For the outward world is subjected to the law of imperfection, and again and again the experience is repeated that he too who does not work gets the bread, and that he who sleeps gets it more abundantly than the man who works. In the outward world everything is made payable to the bearer, this world is in bondage to the law of indifference, and to him who has the ring, the spirit of the ring is obedient, whether he be Noureddin or Aladdin, and he who has the world's treasure, has it, however he got it.“

—  Sören Kierkegaard Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism 1813 - 1855

Problemata: Preliminary Expectoration
1840s, Fear and Trembling (1843)
Kontext: An old proverb fetched from the outward and visible world says: "Only the man that works gets the bread." Strangely enough this proverb does not aptly apply in that world to which it expressly belongs. For the outward world is subjected to the law of imperfection, and again and again the experience is repeated that he too who does not work gets the bread, and that he who sleeps gets it more abundantly than the man who works. In the outward world everything is made payable to the bearer, this world is in bondage to the law of indifference, and to him who has the ring, the spirit of the ring is obedient, whether he be Noureddin or Aladdin, and he who has the world's treasure, has it, however he got it.

„I will hate the man you choose because he isn't me, and love him if he makes you smile.“

—  Robert Jordan, kniha The Eye of the World

Zdroj: The Eye of the World

„We all commit mistakes. If a man is loved, he’s forgiven, but if he’s hated, then society would turn his deeds into sins“

—  Ali Al-Wardi Iraqi sociologist 1913 - 1995

„The specialist serves as a striking concrete example of the species, making clear to us the radical nature of the novelty. For, previously, men could be divided simply into the learned and the ignorant, those more or less the one, and those more or less the other. But your specialist cannot be brought in under either of these two categories. He is not learned, for he is formally ignorant of all that does not enter into his speciality; but neither is he ignorant, because he is "a scientist," and "knows" very well his own tiny portion of the universe. We shall have to say that he is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it implies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with an the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line.“

—  José Ortega Y Gasset, kniha The Revolt of the Masses

Zdroj: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XII: The Barbarism Of "Specialisation"

„When the Superior Man (Junzi) eats he does not try to stuff himself; at rest he does not seek perfect comfort; he is diligent in his work and careful in speech. He avails himself to people of the Tao and thereby corrects himself. This is the kind of person of whom you can say, "he loves learning."“

—  Confucius Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher -551 - -479 pred n. l.

The Analects, Chapter I
Originál: (zh_Hant) 君子食無求飽，居無求安，敏於事而慎於言，就有道而正焉，可謂好學也已。

„[Servetus] is a wise man who doubtless thought he was teaching the truth, but he fell into the hands of the Devil.. . . Be careful the same thing does not happen to you!“

—  William Farel French evangelist 1489 - 1565

On October 27, 1553, Michael Servetus was burned at the stake in Geneva, Switzerland. Guillaume Farel —the executioner and vicar of John Calvin— warned the onlookers with these words. Awake! magazine, May 2006; Michael Servetus—A Solitary Quest for the Truth.

„A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is "sensitive"; or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture — in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers.“

—  Andrea Dworkin Feminist writer 1946 - 2005

Speech at Queen's College, City University of New York (March 12, 1975). "The Sexual Politics of Fear and Courage", ch. 5, published in Our Blood (1976).

„The seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency.“

—  Alhazen Arab physicist, mathematician and astronomer 965 - 1039

Alhazen, quoted in “Muslim Journeys.” Bridging Cultures Bookshelf: Muslim Journeys. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013. Also in Ibn al-Haytham Brief life of an Arab mathematician: died circa 1040 (September-October 2003) http://harvardmagazine.com/2003/09/ibn-al-haytham-html