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The only true method of action in this world is to be in it, but not of it.
--
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 622.

 

Madame Swetchine

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I was convinced — and I am so still — that the fundamental principles of Christianity have to be proved true by reasoning, and by no other method. Reason, I said to myself, is given us that we may bring everything within the range of its action, even the most exalted ideas of religion. And this certainty filled me with joy.

 

Albert Schweitzer

 

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities. Cleverly designed experiments are the key.

 

Carl Sagan

 

Truth existed before the world began and will still be persisting until long after the world ends, so therefore "source of truth" really has no bearing on anything. What is important is the discovery of truth and its application. That is, to what purpose is the truth put, to what goals it is used for, the method in which the truth is applied, to what benefit the truth is used, that is, who benefits by its use or its non-use or its being hidden or exposed. Such things as truth, facts, knowledge and discoveries, and techniques, are tools, and they in themselves don't have the ability to create or cause any action, effect or result. It is what people do with them that is important. It's the Being behind the tool. A scalpel can cut your throat or it can repair a body. A hammer can bash somebody's brains out or build a house. Therefore, what's more important is the individual's intention and action with that tool, not the tool itself.

 

Ronald (born L. Ron Hubbard DeWolfe

 

The method of not erring is sought by all the world. The logicians profess to guide it, the geometricians alone attain it, and apart from science, and the imitations of it, there are no true demonstrations.

 

Blaise Pascal

 

All the time I felt I was being watched, that I was not alone, that I was putting on an act for the benefit of someone, that this action could be done only if it was spontaneous, pure – and moral. Because more and more it crept through my mind with the chill spring night that I was trying to commit not a moral action, but a fundamentally aesthetic one; to do something that would end my life sensationally, significantly, consistently. It was a Mercutio death I was looking for, not a real one. A death to be remembered, not the true death of a true suicide, the death obliterate.

 

John Fowles