Georg C. Lichtenberg

[Aphorisms, Notebook J 1789 ]

... no amount of determinism can prevent [one] from believing that he acts as a free being.

or

... all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, [man] believes he has free will.

R. Buckminster Fuller

[NASA speech (1966)]

There is no such thing as genius, some children are just less damaged than others.

Arthur C. Clarke

Clarke's Laws:

• When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
• The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
• For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Every revolutionary idea — in science, politics, art, or whatever — seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:

(1) "It's completely impossible — don't waste my time";
(2) "It's possible, but it's not worth doing";
(3) "I said it was a good idea all along."

Gregory and Mary Bateson

From Angels Fear: Towards An Epistemology Of The Sacred

Syllogism of metaphor:

    Grass dies;
    Men die;
    Men are grass.

Richard Rorty

I wrote this down (in 1981) as “From a Rorty rebuttal”

The fallacious inference from 'better for mastering' to 'more objective' is just a quirky, though central, feature of Western metaphysical tradition.... 

Liking Bohr and disliking Skinner ... [is just] expressing a preference for predicting rocks over doing anything else with them and for doing other things with people over predicting their  behavior. Yes, Skinner is dotty, but physicists are equally dotty to think they view nature naked, unveiled by human concerns.

Annie Dillard

From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Nature is, above all, profligate. Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance? Nature will try anything once. This is what the sign of the insects says. No form is too gruesome, no behavior too grotesque. If you're dealing with organic compounds, then let them combine. If it works, if it quickens, set it clacking on the grass; there's always room for one more; you ain't so handsome yourself. This is a spendthrift economy; though nothing is lost, all is spent.