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To overcome the resistance to truth, literature makes use of fictions that are images of truth.

— Harvey Mansfield How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

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More quotes by Harvey Mansfield

Sociobiology reduces the human to the animal instead of observing how the animal becomes human.

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

The demand for more civility in politics today should be directed toward improving the quality of our insults, seeking civility in wit rather than blandness.

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

The simplified notion of self-interest used by our political and social science cannot tolerate the tension between one’s own and the good, for that tension leaves human behavior unpredictable.

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

People want to stand for something, which means opposing those who stand for something else.

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

Science, according to science, ought to be the most important attribute of human beings.

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

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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)

Attribution

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