6 ideas
| 15833 | Tell cleverness from answers, but wisdom from questions [Mahfouz] |
| Full Idea: You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. | |
| From: Naguib Mahfouz (works [1998]) | |
| A reaction: [Popped up on Twitter. I am adjusting to the 21st century] The observation is simplistic, of course, but very nice indeed. |
| 541 | Virtue comes more from habit than character [Critias] |
| Full Idea: More men are good through habit than through character. | |
| From: Critias (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B09), quoted by John Stobaeus - Anthology 3.29.41 |
| 542 | Fear of the gods was invented to discourage secret sin [Critias] |
| Full Idea: When the laws forbade men to commit open crimes of violence, and they began to do them in secret, a wise and clever man invented fear of the gods for mortals, to frighten the wicked, even if they sin in secret. | |
| From: Critias (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B25), quoted by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Professors (six books) 9.54 |
| 1470 | Belief in an afterlife may be unverifiable in this life, but it will be verifiable after death [Hick, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Religion is capable of 'eschatological verification', by reaching evidence at the end of life, even though falsification of its claims is never found in this life; a prediction of coming to a Celestial City must await the end of the journey. | |
| From: report of John Hick (Theology and Verification [1960], III) by PG - Db (ideas) |
| 1471 | It may be hard to verify that we have become immortal, but we could still then verify religious claims [Hick, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Verification of religious claims after death is only possible if the concept of surviving death is intelligible, and we can understand the concept of immortality, despite difficulties in being certain that we had reached it. | |
| From: report of John Hick (Theology and Verification [1960], IV) by PG - Db (ideas) |
| 1469 | Some things (e.g. a section of the expansion of PI) can be verified but not falsified [Hick, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Falsification and verification are not logically equivalent. For example, you might verify the claim that there will be three consecutive sevens in the infinite expansion of PI, but you could never falsify such a claim. | |
| From: report of John Hick (Theology and Verification [1960], §II) by PG - Db (ideas) |