for doubt, against dogma

Away from this forum for a week, I thought out a long response to the
problematic of aggressive PC moralizing by unreconstructed Third
Internationalists on the list.  But I thought better of it.  I decided
instead to share this collection of quotes I compiled a few years ago, all
designed to counter the tendency toward dogma.

Enjoy!  And please circulate!

RH

*****

De Omnibus Dubitandum! (Doubt Everything!)
        -Karl Marx's favorite motto
                (he also famously said "I am not a marxist.")

The Universe is a creative advance into novelty.
        -Alfred North Whitehead

All truths are only half truths.
        -Alfred North Whitehead

That which exists does not conform to various opinions, but rather the
correct opinions conform to that which exists.
        -Aristotle

Everything you know is wrong.
        -Firesign Theater

The believer is happy, the doubter wise.
        -Greek proverb

Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.
        -Voltaire

No formal system can be both consistent and complete.
        -paraphrase of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem


We are all prisoners of a rigid conception of what is important and what
is not.  We anxiously follow what we suppose to be important, while what
we suppose to be unimportant wages guerrilla warfare behind our backs,
transforming the world without our knowledge and eventually mounting a
sneak attack on us.
        -Milan Kundera