Day 94

Aristotle (384—322 B.C.)

Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas — Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

Familiar Quotations: John Bartlett 15th and 125th Anniversary Edition, E. M. Beck (editor), (Little, Brown, Boston, 1980) p. 87.

Day 93

Al Hazen (Ibn al-Haytham) (c. 965—1039)

It is not the person who studies the books of his predecessors and gives a free reign to his natural disposition to regard them favourably who is the real seeker after truth, but rather the person who in thinking about them is filled with doubts, who holds back his judgement with respect to what he has understood of what they say, who follows proof and demonstration rather than the assertions of a man whose natural disposition is characterized by all kinds of defects and shortcomings. A person who studies scientific books with a view to knowing the truth ought to turn himself into a hostile critic of everything that he studies ... He should criticize it from every point of view and in all its aspects. And while thus engaged in criticism he should also be suspicious of himself and not allow himself to be easy-going and indulgent with regard to the object of his criticism.

Critique of Ptolemy, translated by S. Pines in Actes X Congrès internationale d’historie des Sciences I (Ithaca, 1962) and cited by S. Sambursky in Physical Thought from the Presocratics to the Quantum Physicists (Hutchinson, London) 1974 p. 139.

Day 92

Bunuel, L.

I would give my life for a man who is looking for truth. But I would gladly kill a man who thinks he has found truth.

Attributed by C. Fuentes in the Guardian Weekly March 5, 1989, p. 8 in an article discussing The Satanic Verses by S. Rushdie and by S. Rushdie in the Herbert Read Lecture, delivered by H. Pinter and reprinted in the Guardian Weekly February 18, 1990, p. 4.

Day 91

Crowfoot (1821—1890)

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

Dying words of Crowfoot, Orator for the Blackfoot Confederacy. Recorded in Monture, E.B. Canadian Portraits, Brant, Crowfoot, Oronhyatekha, Famous Indians (Clark, Irwin & Co.; Toronto 1960) p. 120; cited by T. C. McLuhan in Touch The Earth (Promontory Press, New York, 1971) p. 12.