Sidney Hook Quotes

Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.

Tolerance always has limits - it cannot tolerate what is itself actively intolerant.

To silence criticism is to silence freedom.

I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature.

The easiest rationalization for the refusal to seek the truth is the denial that truth exists.

Fear of death has been the greatest ally of tyranny past and present.

One of the central assumptions of the concept of democracy, perhaps its most central assumption, is that by and large human beings are better judges of their own interests.... The operating maxim of the democratic ideology is, "Whoever wears the shoe knows best where it pinches.

The difference between science and religion is that the former wishes to get rid of mysteries whereas the latter worships them.

In contrast to totalitarianism, democracy can face and live with the truth about itself.

Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments.

Nonetheless, it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs, religious doctrines constitute a speculative hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.

Those who say that life is worth living at any cost have already written an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person that they will not betray to stay alive.

To serve the public interest is not the same as being a servant of public opinion.

Students rarely disappoint teachers who assure them in advance that they are doomed to failure.

No one who accepts the sovereignty of truth can be a foot soldier in a party or movement. He will always find himself out of step.

Stupidity is sometimes the greatest of historical forces.

Religious tolerance has developed more as a consequence of the impotence of religions to impose their dogmas on each other than as a consequence of spiritual humility in the quest for understanding first and last things.

Life has meaning for anyone who takes an interest in it.

A liberal education will impart an awareness of the amazing and precious complexity of human relationships. Since those relationships are violated more often out of insensitiveness than out of deliberate intent, whatever increases sensitiveness of perception and understanding humanizes life.

Russell's prose has been compared by T.S. Eliot to that of David Hume's. I would rank it higher, for it had more color, juice, and humor. But to be lucid, exciting and profound in the main body of one's work is a combination of virtues given to few philosophers. Bertrand Russell has achieved immortality by his philosophical writings.

The mob that hails the man on horseback, the Caesars and conquering heroes, does not retain its freedoms for long.

Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness.

Everyone recognizes a distinction between knowledge and wisdom. . . Wisdom is a kind of knowledge. It is knowledge of the nature, career, and consequences of human values. Since these cannot be separated from the human organism and the social scene, the moral ways of man cannot be understood without knowledge of the ways of things and institutions.

Noam Chomsky skittles and skithers all over the political landscape to distract the reader’s attention from the plain truth.

Religious freedom in an open society has the best prospects of flourishing to the extent that it expresses itself as freedom of religious inquiry.

Philosophy, most broadly viewed, is the critical survey of existence from the standpoint of value.

[A]nti-Semitism was rife in almost all varieties of socialism.

To deny me the right to err is therefore to deny me the right to believe.

If one shoots at a king, one must not miss.

Wisdom is an affair of values, and of value judgments. It is intelligent conduct of human affairs.

The next time anyone asks you "What is Bertrand Russell's philosophy?" the correct answer is "What year, please?"