Citas varias.

Citas del sitio The Philosophers' Magazine Online donde hay un interesante test (dato que me pasó Maurol) sobre la logica de creer o no creer en dios que pone en evidencia las limitaciones de la logica formal y la metafisica para dar cuenta de la realidad.

A esta cita la traduzco

George Orwell
In a society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not," the individual can practice a certain amount of eccentricity; when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason," he is under continuous pressure to make him behave exactly the same way as everyone else.
Politics vs. Literature

porque tiene que ver con lo que para mi es una de las peores pestes psiquicas que andan dando vueltas:

George Orwell
En una sociedad en la cual no hay ley, y en teoria no hay compulsión, el unico árbitro es la opinión publica. Pero la opinión pública, debido a la tremenda compulsion a la conformidad en los animales gregarios, es menos tolerante que cualquier sistema legal. Cuando los seres humanos estan gobernados por el "No..." el individuo puede practicar algun grado de excentricidad; cuando se los supone gobernados por el "amor" o "la razón" el individuo esta sometido a una presion continua para hacerlo comportar exactamente en la misma manera que todos los demás
Politica vs. literatura.

relacionado con la idea de Orwell esto decía Tocqueville sobre Usamerica:

Alexis de Tocqueville
Under the absolute sway of one man the body was attacked in order to subdue the soul; but the soul escaped the blows which were directed against it and rose proudly superior. Such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic republics; there the body is left free, and the soul is enslaved. The master no longer says: 'You shall think as I do or you shall die'; but he says: 'You are free to think differently from me and to retain your life, your property, and all that you possess; but you are henceforth a stranger among your people.'
Democracy in America

en algun grado ya no importa tanto ser un "stranger among your people" y la divergencia es tal que esto es bastante normal hoy dia. Tocqueville escribía siglo y medio atrás, Orwell hace medio siglo y ambos se basan en un hecho que, en gran medida, hoy dia solo vale para adolescentes y los niveles mas primitivos de la sociedad...

Karl Marx
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

Adam Smith
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
The Wealth of Nations

Alexis de Tocqueville
In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them. Not that he is in danger of an auto-da-fe, but he is exposed to continued obloquy and persecution.
Democracy in America

Adam Smith
What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
The Wealth of Nations

Aldous Huxley
It is a little embarrassing that, after 45 years of research and study, the best advice I can give to people is to be a little kinder to each other.
This Timeless Moment

Karl Jaspers
An ideology is a complex of ideas or notions which represents itself to the thinker as an absolute truth for the interpretation of the world and his situation within it; it leads the thinker to accomplish an act of self-deception for the purpose of justification, obfuscation and evasion in some sense or other to his advantage.
The Origin and Goal of History

John Searle
For us, if it should turn out that God exists, that would have to be a fact of nature like any other. To the four basic forces in the universe--gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces--we would add a fifth, the divine force. Or more likely, we would see the other forces as forms of the divine force. But it would still be all physics, albeit divine physics. If the supernatural existed, it too would have to be natural.
Mind, Language and Society

John Searle
In general, I feel if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.
The Philosophers' Magazine, Autumn 1999

Kurt Vonnegut
All those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand...

Auguste Comte
Religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown under proper education.

y la inigualable capacidad de sintesis de los humildes
de los de mente humilde:

Anonymous Truck Driver
It was a great piece of meat.
Cited in Ed Wilson's 'The Diversity of Life' (Talking about one of the last two surviving imperial woodpeckers, largest of all the world's woodpeckers, which he had just shot.)

Camionero anónimo
Fué un buen pedazo de carne
Citado por Ed Wilson en "La Diversidad de la Vida" (a proposito de uno de los dos ultimos pájaros carpinteros imperiales sobrevivientes, el carpintero mas grande del mundo, que el camionero habia cazado de un tiro)

Lo que parece ser algo deleznable en palabras de Tocqueville:

Alexis de Tocqueville
I think that in no country in the civilized world is less attention paid to philosophy than in the United States. The Americans have no philosophical school of their own, and they care but little for all the schools into which Europe is divided, the very names of which are scarcely known to them.
Democracy in America, Vol II

podría resultar ser un merito si Whitehead hubiese estado en lo cierto:

Alfred North Whitehead
The safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
Process and Reality

mi personal predileccion es contabilizar como un gran mérito de USAmerica el haberse construido sin perder tiempo con 20 siglos de notas al pie de la obra de Platon. Las ideas, como los pernos, pedales, caminos y zapatos se vuelven obsoletas con el tiempo porque a diferencia de pantalones y zapatos que se gastan y cambian de modelo segun las modas pero tienen la misma razon de ser (proteger una anatomia que casi cambia ) las ideas dependen de procesos y de la "naturaleza humana" que tambien depende de procesos... la naturaleza humana de los urbanites que eventualmente tienen la oportunidad de ver un pollo con plumas alguna vez ya avanzada la adultez es algo completamente diferente que la que ha tenido la humanidad hasta ahora y solo se parece en lo mas basico: querer vivir, no querer sufrimiento fisico etc.

Antonio Gramsci
In history, in social life, nothing is fixed, rigid or definitive. And nothing ever will be.
Selections from Cultural Writings

Antonio Gramsci
The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.

Erich Fromm
There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as "moral indignation," which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.
Man For Himself

George Orwell
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
The Road to Wigan Pier

George Orwell
He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him).
Down and Out in Paris and London