William R. Manning

“when both can’t be true. In 1946, in the days after World War II, presidential advisor Bernard Baruch said, “Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” Variations have been uttered by U.S. Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger, U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and others. Today this seemingly indisputable truth no longer holds. Propaganda is indistinguishable from fact and we find ourselves living in the frightening pages of a George Orwell novel.””

“I do believe you think what now you speak;But what we do determine oft we break.   135Purpose is but the slave to memory,Of violent birth, but poor validity;Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,But fall unshaken when they mellow be.Most necessary ’tis that we forget   140To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt;What to ourselves in passion we propose,The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.The violence of either grief or joyTheir own enactures with themselves destroy;   145Where joy most revels grief doth most lament,Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.This world is not for aye, nor ’tis not strange,That even our love should with our fortunes change;For ’tis a question left us yet to prove   150Whe’r love lead fortune or else fortune love.The great man down, you mark his favourite flies;The poor advanc’d makes friends of enemies.And hitherto doth love on fortune tend,For who not needs shall never lack a friend;   155And who in want a hollow friend doth tryDirectly seasons him his enemy.But, orderly to end where I begun,Our wills and fates do so contrary runThat our devices still are overthrown,   160””

“… scientific thought does not mean thought about scientific subjects with long names. There are no scientific subjects. The subject of science is the human universe; that is to say, everything that is, or has been, or may be related to man.””