Positivism Quotes

• POSITIVISM- A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and affirms our ignorance of the Apparent. Its longest exponent is Comte, its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Philosophy, Real, Ignorance

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.167, 谷月社

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• The sacred formula of positivism: love as a principle, the order as a foundation, and progress as a goal.

  Auguste Comte

  Order, Goal, Progress

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• Positivism is a theory of knowledge according to which the only kind of sound knowledge available to human kind is that if science grounded in observation.

  Auguste Comte

  Knowledge, Science, Sound

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• Never indulge in people who follow a negative path because they will take you with them on the road of ruin. Show them the way to positivism even if there's a risk of losing their friendship.

  Siddharth Katragadda

  Indulge In, People, Risk

  "Dark Rooms: A Saga". Book by Siddharth Katragadda, 2002.

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• I am not a positivist. Positivism states that what cannot be observed does not exist. This conception is scientifically indefensible, for it is impossible to make valid affirmations of what people 'can' or 'cannot' observe. One would have to say 'only what we observe exists,' which is obviously false.

  Albert Einstein

  People, Doe, Impossible

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.395, Princeton University Press

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• Positivism stands or falls with the principle of scientism, that is that the meaning of knowledge is defined by what the sciences do and can thus be adequately explicated through the methodological analysis of scientific procedures.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Fall, Knowledge, Science

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• What we really need to avoid is this epidemic of false positivism and false happiness, which says if it hurts, it must be bad. Sometimes it hurts because you have a conscience.

  Marianne Williamson

  Hurt, Epidemics, Needs

  Source: rayhemachandra.com

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• Worshiping the Devil is no more insane than worshiping God...It is precisely at the moment when positivism is at its high-water mark that mysticism stirs into life and the follies of occultism begin.

  Joris-Karl Huysmans

  Water, Insane, Devil

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• Positivism eliminates any kind of natural law principle - for example, that there are economic laws which can be transgressed only at your peril. With positivism, there is a tendency to leap into ad hoc economic theory.

  Murray Rothbard

  Law, Principles, Example

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• I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their concept of a deity intelligible; and to the extent that they have made it intelligible, they have given us no reason to think that anything answers to it.

  A.J. Ayer

  Atheist, Believe, Thinking

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• All that we call spirit and art and ecstacy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Mean, Awful

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

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• The error in positivism is that it takes as its standard of truth the contingently given division of labor, that between the science and social praxis as well as that within science itself, and allows no theory that could reveal the division of labor to be itself derivative and mediated and thus strip it of its false authority.

  Theodor Adorno

  Division Of Labor, Errors, Derivatives

  Theodor W. Adorno (2012). “Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords”, p.10, Columbia University Press

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• Such evidence is not the only kind which produces belief; though positivism maintains that it is the only kind which ought to produce so high a degree of confidence as all minds have or can be made to have through their agreements.

  Chauncey Wright

  Confidence, Agreement, Mind

  Chauncey Wright (2000). “The Evolutionary Philosophy of Chauncey Wright”, p.96, A&C Black

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• Gaston Milhaud, like many of his contemporaries, sought to overthrow empirical positivism by insisting on the fundamental reality of the mind, but mind conceived in the Kantian sense. The knowledge of nature is symbolic, and there is no necessary connection between the phenomena and our fictions.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Reality, Mind, Connections

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• Design is interesting because it's utopian. Art is often a jaundiced commentary on contemporary life. Design is always about the future; it's always about something great and new that's come out that will make the future brighter. It has this weird 18th - century positivism about it.

  Momus

  Art, Interesting, Design

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Mean, Common Sense

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

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• It is for Muslim scholars to study the whole history of Islamic science completely and not only the chapters and periods which influenced Western science. It is also for Muslim scholars to present the tradition of Islamic science from the point of view of Islam itself and not from the point of view of the scientism, rationalism and positivism which have dominated the history of science in the West since the establishment of the discipline in the early part of the 20th century in Europe and America.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Islamic, Views, Europe

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• The priest invents and encourages every kind of suffering and distress so that man may not have the opportunity to become scientific, which requires a considerable degree of free time, health, and an outlook of confident positivism. Thus, the religious authorities work hard to make and keep people feeling sinful, unworthy, and unhappy.

  Robert Sheaffer

  Religious, Hard Work, Opportunity

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• The Spirit of Cities presents a new approach to the study of cities in which the focus is placed on a city's defining ethos or values. The style of the book is attractively conversational and even autobiographical, and far from current social science positivism. For a lover of cities--and perhaps even for one who is not--The Spirit of Cities is consistently good reading.

  Nathan Glazer

  Book, Reading, Ethos

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