We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us. Ideas of the Stone Age exist side by side with the latest scientific thought. Only a fraction of mankind has emerged from the Dark Ages, and in the most lucid brains, as Logan Pearsall Smith has said, we come upon nests of woolly caterpillars. Seemingly sane men entrust their wealth to stargazers and their health to witch doctors. Giant planes throb through the stratosphere, but half their passengers are wearing magic amulets and are protected from harm by voodoo incantations. Hotels boast of express elevators and a telephone in every room, but omit thirteen from all floor and room numbers lest their guests be ill at ease.
—Bergen Evans
Topics: Superstition
Stoicism is the wisdom of madness and cynicism the madness of wisdom.
—Bergen Evans
Topics: Wisdom
The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical… Any man who for one moment abandons or suspends the questioning spirit has for that moment betrayed humanity.
—Bergen Evans
Topics: Wildlife
There is no necessary connection between the desire to lead and the ability to lead, and even less the ability to lead somewhere that will be to the advantage of the led.
—Bergen Evans
Topics: Leadership
The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.
—Bergen Evans
Topics: Virtue
Wisdom is meaningless until your own experience has given it meaning, and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.
—Bergen Evans
Topics: Wisdom, Meaning, Quotations
That is the essence of a witch-hunt, that any questioning of the evidence or the procedures in itself constitutes proof of complicity.
—Bergen Evans
Topics: Questions
Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.
—Bergen Evans
Topics: Doubt
Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.
—Bergen Evans
Leave a Reply