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If you believe that you are not a machine, but that I am (then) I do not know why you are reading this book".

— Lewis White Beck

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More quotes by Lewis White Beck

In order to know and to act, it is necessary both to see and to think.

Lewis White Beck Essays on Kant and Hume (1978)

Whatever plausibility the machine theory has- and it has much plausibility and is a rich model for psychology and neurology- it gains by being associated with a self-exemption clause.

The quest for other, and better, forms of life, society, technology, ethics, and law may not reveal that they are actually elsewhere; but it may in the long run help us to make some of them actual on earth.

Myth, religion and now science-fiction with their tales of benevolent and malevolent extraterrestrial beings are commentaries on the human condition. I believe even responsible scientific speculation and expensive technology of space exploration in search for other life are the peculiarly modern equivalent of angeology and Utopia or of demonology and apocalypse.

It is not my place to tell you whether there is indefeasible ignorance of ultimate reality. I am ignorant of whether there is or is not. But you should think of these things because there are no things more important, though there are no questions more difficult or less answerable. But one's whole life may be changed if one changes his mind about these questions.

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith Afterthoughts (1931)

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