Scrutiny Quotes
More Scrutiny Quotes
Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
— 1980 Interview in TheTimes, 20 Oct.
If you have reservations about the system and want to change it, the democratic argument goes, do so within the system: put yourself forward as a candidate for political office, subject yourself to the scrutiny and the vote of fellow citizens. Democracy does not allow for politics outside the democratic system. In this sense, democracy is totalitarian.
j. m. coetzee— p. 15 (Diary of a Bad Year (2007))
I always felt that my work hadn't much to do with art; my admirations for other art had very little room to show themselves in my work because I hoped that if I concentrated enough the intensity of scrutiny alone would force life into the pictures. I ignored the fact that art, after all, derives from art. Now I realize that this is the case.
lucian freud— Said in conversation with Robert Hughes and quoted in Hughes' Lucian Freud: Paintings (1987) ISBN 0-500-27535-1, p.14
You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself. (Especially code from companies that employ people like me.) No amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from using untrusted code.
kenneth thompson— "Reflections on Trusting Trust", 1983 Turing Award Lecture[1], Communications of the ACM 27 (8), August 1984, pp. 761-763.
. . . a sober evaluation of the data suggests the phenomena warrants further scrutiny.
kenny young— In reference to UFOs on Young's autobiography on his website, "About This Website".
I have often been surprised that Mathematics, the quintessence of Truth, should have found admirers so few and so languid. Frequent consideration and minute scrutiny have at length unravelled the cause: viz . that though Reason is feasted, Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise, Imagination is wearily travelling on a dreary desert.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge— Letter to his brother (1791).
The underlying reason for convergence seems to be that all organisms are under constant scrutiny of natural selection and are also subject to the constraints of the physical and chemical factors that severely limit the action of all inhabitants of the biosphere. Put simply, convergence shows that in a real world not all things are possible.
simon conway morris— p.202 (The Crucible of Creation (1998))
Thus, in a crucial way, the Kansas hearings repeat the pattern set by the Scopes Trial, which has been repeated many times since, namely, evolutionists escaped critical scrutiny by not having to undergo cross-examination. In this case, they accomplished the feat by boycotting the hearings. I therefore await the day when the hearings are not voluntary but involve subpoenas that compel evolutionists to be deposed and interrogated at length on their views.
william a. dembski— "The Vise Strategy: Squeezing the Truth out of Darwinists", Uncommon Descent, 11 May 2005, retrieved on 2011-10-23
It is true of opinions as of other compositions that those who are seeped in them, whose ears are sensitive to literary nuances, whose antennae record subtle silences, can gather from their contents meaning beyond the words. All this presupposes, of course, a grasp of the nature of the Supreme Court's functions the scope and limits of its constitutional authority and often, as well, familiarity with the record and briefs of a particular case whose opinion record and briefs of a particular case whose opinion is under scrutiny.
felix frankfurter— "'The Administrative Side' of Chief Justice Hughes", 63 Harvard Law Review 1, 2 (1949).
Most impediments to scientific understanding are conceptual locks, not factual lacks. Most difficult to dislodge are those biases that escape our scrutiny because they seem so obviously, even ineluctably, just. We know ourselves best and tend to view other creatures as mirrors of our own constitution and social arrangements. ( Aristotle , and nearly two millennia of successors, designated the large bee that leads the swarm as a king.)
stephen jay gould— "Glow, Big Glowworm", p. 256
Phony psychics like Uri Geller have had particular success in bamboozling scientists with ordinary stage magic, because only scientists are arrogant enough to think that they always observe with rigorous and objective scrutiny, and therefore could never be so fooled while ordinary mortals know perfectly well that good performers can always find a way to trick people.
stephen jay gould— p. 36 (The Mismeasure of Man (1996))
Keynes disdained inside information in fact, he once declared that Wall Street traders could make huge fortunes if only they would disregard their "inside" information and his own oracles were nothing but his minute scrutiny of balance sheets, his encyclopedic knowledge of finance , his intuition into personalities, and a certain flair for trading.
robert heilbroner— Chapter IX, John Maynard Keynes, p. 248-249
The PATRIOT Act allows Federal agents to look at public and university library patron circulation records, books checked out, magazines consulted, all subject to government scrutiny. There used to be a time in this country when we were worried whether our young people knew how to read. Now some in our government are more worried that government agents be able to find out what people are reading.
dennis kucinich— Speech from the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressional Record (15 June 2005) [9].
One truth we have been able to count on concerning scientific persuit over the centuries has been that only testable theories survive the intense scrutiny of experimental science.
john moffat— Chapter 8, Strings And Quantum Gravity, p. 136
The second reason adduced, viz., that Aryabhata should have hailed from Kerala is fragile. Besides the Aryabhatan system being prevalent in this land,-“all” commentaries on Aryabha?ya have been produced by Kerala astronomers really does not stand scrutiny.
— In, p.111 (Aryabhata : His Name, Time And Provenance)
We seek for truth in ourselves; in our neighbours, and in its essential nature. We find it first in ourselves by severe self scrutiny , then in our neighbours by compassionate indulgence, and, finally, in its essential nature by that direct vision which belongs to the pure in heart .
— Saint Bernard in: Yale Studies in English, Volume 125, Lamson, Wolffe and Company, 1954, p.118
If clinical multiple personality is buried and forgotten, then the Manchurian Candidate Programs will be safe from public scrutiny.
— Colin A. Ross, in The C.I.A. Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychiatrists, (1 January 2006), p.37
Machiavelli says that if as a ruler you accept that your every action must pass moral scrutiny, you will without fail be defeated by an opponent who submits to no such moral test. To hold on to power, you have not only to master the crafts of deception and treachery but to be prepared to use them where necessary.
j. m. coetzee— p. 17 (Diary of a Bad Year (2007))
The whole is a riddle, an aenigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape, into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.
David Hume— Part XV - General corollary
