Good Entropy

Before impugning an opponent’s motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments. – Sidney Hook

“You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity” – Robert A. Heinlein’s from the 1941 short story “Logic of Empire”

“Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

It has been said that there are no paradoxes, only false assumptions. Scot M. Silverstein, M.D.

A photograph is neither taken nor seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you.  One must not take photos. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do – that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse. – Diane Arbus

I love the medium of photography, for with its unique realism it gives me the power to go beyond conventional ways of seeing and understanding and say, This is real, too.” – Wynn Bullock

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. – Dorthea Lange

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs. – Ansel Adams

No place is boring if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film. – Robert Adams, Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques, May 1995

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see. – Dorothea Lange

I think the best pictures are often on the edges of any situation, I don’t find photographing the situation nearly as interesting as photographing the edges. – William Albert Allard, “The Photographic Essay”

I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything. – John Steinbeck

All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. – Richard Avedon

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera. – Lewis Hine

A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know. – Diane Arbus

They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum. – Tallulah Bankhead

Actually, I’m not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I’m not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren’t cooks. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. – Daniel Patrick Moynihan

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” – John Maynard Keynes

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” – Confucius

“An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don’t.” – Anatole France

“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” – HL Mencken

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep..to gain that which he cannot lose.” Jim Elliot, 1949

“A body can pretend to care, but they can’t pretend to be there.” Texas Bix Bender

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.” – Richard P. Feynman

“Only the refusal to listen guarantees one against being ensnared by the truth” – Robert Nozick

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” – Red Adair

“Smokey the Bear’s rules for fire safety also apply to government: Keep
it small, keep it in a confined area, and keep an eye on it.” – high-school libertarian newsletter from Minnesota

“The wise man learns more from the fool, than the fool will ever learn from the wise man.”  – Fortune Cookie