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The correct reading of \vdash p written down by me in good faith is therefore 'I believe p', or some other words expressing the same fiduciary act.

— Michael Polanyi Personal Knowledge (1958)

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More quotes by Michael Polanyi

No sincere assertion of fact is essentially unaccompanied by feelings of intellectual satisfaction or of a persuasive desire and a sense of personal responsibility.

Personal Knowledge (1958)

While the articulate contents of science are successfully taught all over the world in hundreds of universities, the unspecifiable art of scientific research has not yet penetrated to many of these.

Personal Knowledge (1958)

A declaratory sentence can be asserted, because it is an incomplete symbol, of indeterminate modality; while a question, a command, an invective, or any other sentence of fixed intention can no more be asserted than could my act of hewing wood or of drinking tea.

Personal Knowledge (1958)

The term 'simplicity' functions then merely as a disguise for another meaning than its own. It is used for smuggling an essential quality into our appreciation of a scientific theory, which a mistaken conception of objectivity forbids us to openly acknowledge.

Personal Knowledge (1958)

The descriptive sciences rely on skill and connoisseurship. At all these points the act of knowing includes an appraisal; and this personal coefficient, which shapes all factual knowledge, bridges in doing so the disjunction between subjectivity and objectivity. It implies the claim that man can transcend his own subjectivity by striving passionately to fulfil his personal obligations to universal standards.

Personal Knowledge (1958)

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Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Thomas Jefferson Letter to Peter Carr (1787)

I had never doubted my own abilities, but I was quite prepared to believe that "the world" would decline to recognize them.

Colin Wilson Postscript to the Outsider (1967)

Love is the active, working principle in all true faith. It is its very soul, without which it is dead. "Faith works by love."

Jonathan Edwards Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Michael Polanyi (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.