Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can’t say it clearly you don’t understand it yourself.
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P. xJohn Searle
Speaking for myself, I am not one of those people who are able to deal with the problem by ignoring the questions: it may be a matter of temperament, but for me the apparent unanswerability of the questions sharpens the persistence with which they nag at my mind. Scarcely a day has gone by since my childhood in which I have not thought of them. In fact, the truth is that I have lived my life in thrall to them. They seem to me obviously the most important and interesting questions there are, and in my heart of hearts I do not really understand why not everybody sees them as such. And yet at the end of it all I have no solutions. I am as baffled now by the larger metaphysical questions of my existence as I was when I was a child—indeed more so, because my understanding of the depths and difficulties of the questions themselves is now so much greater.
Bryan Magee
Mathematicians themselves set up standards of generality and elegance in their exposition which are a bar to understand.
Kenneth Boulding
Those who are concerned with the arts are often asked questions, not always sympathetic ones, about the use or value of what they are doing. It is probably impossible to answer such questions directly, or at any rate to answer the people who ask them.
Northrop Frye
It is, therefore, a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave: Though at the same time, it appears somewhat strange, that a maxim should be true in politics, which is false in fact. But to satisfy us on this head, we may consider, that men are generally more honest in their private than in their public capacity, and will go greater lengths to serve a party, than when their own private interest is alone concerned. Honour is a great check upon mankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, this check is, in a great measure, removed; since a man is sure to be approved of by his own party, for what promotes the common interest; and he soon learns to despise the clamours of adversaries.
David Hume
Foreign Spokesman Qin Gang let everyone act as journalists to ask him questions. Professor of Beijing United University Chen Delin got the mic first: “What principles do you follow when you answer questions from Chinese and foreign reporters?”
Qin Gang
Searle, John
Sears, Edmund
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