Kindly Inquisitors Quotes

the plural of “anecdote” is “data.

For not only is wiping out bias and hate impossible in principle, in practice eliminating prejudice through central authority means eliminating all but one prejudice—that of whoever is most politically powerful.

Fundamentalism—the intellectual style, not the religious movement—is the strong disinclination to take seriously the notion that you might be wrong.

In a conflict of opinion between Einstein and a fool, one wishes for Einstein to prevail. And in a conflict between Einstein and thousand fools or a million, one wishes all the more for Einstein to prevail.

He’s a child. But he looks like the kind of child who has seen too much of life, who’s seen more than most adults. His eyes are both sharp and dead at the same time. As if he won’t miss anything, because he’s seen it all already.

Anyone—pope, propagandist, anti-Communist, anti-racist—who wants to silence criticism or regulate an argument in order to keep wrong-thinking people out of power has no moral claim to be anything but ignored.

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, “Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?” The young sceptic says, “I have a right to think for myself.” But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, “I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all...Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve, the authority of popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify: these were all only dark defences erected round one central authority, more undemonstrable, more supernatural than all—the authority of a man to think. We know now that this is so; we have no excuse for not knowing it. For we can hear scepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities, and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne. In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which p 60 cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.

... Your questions, Captain Delmonico, go beyond the limits of acceptable behavior! I intend to report you to everyone in a position to discipline you, is that understood?" He was beginning to splutter. "You're a-a-Gestapo inquisitor!" "Mr. Smith," Carmine said gently, "a policeman investigating murder uses many techniques to obtain information, but more than that, he also uses them to learn in the small amount of time at his disposal what kind of person he's questioning. During our first interview you were rude and overbearing, which leaves me free to tread heavily on your toes, even though your toes are sheathed in handmade shoes. You imply that you have the power to see me - er - 'disciplined', but I must tell you that no one in authority will take any notice of your complaints, because those in authority all know me. I have earned my status, not bought it. Murder means that everything in your life is my business until I remove you from my list of suspects. Is that clear?

We are so impressed by honesty, we have forgotten the virtues of politeness, this word defined not as a cynical withholding of important information for the sake of harm, but as a dedication to not rubbing someone else up against the true, hurtful aspects of our nature. It is ultimately no great sign of kindness to insist on showing someone our entire selves at all times. A dedication to maintaining boundaries and editing our pronouncements belongs to love as much as a capacity to show ourselves as we really are. And if one suspects (and one should, rather regularly, if the relationship is a good one) that one’s partner might be lying too (about what they are thinking about, about how they judge one’s work, about where they were last night …), it is perhaps best not to take up arms and lay into them like a sharp, relentless inquisitor, however intensely one yearns to do just that. It may be kinder, wiser and perhaps more in the true spirit of love to pretend one simply didn’t notice.

The first few lines of the third chapter run as follows: All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development—in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver—but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. The state of exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology. Only by being aware of this analogy can we appreciate the manner in which the philosophical idea of the state developed over the last few centuries. I had quickly come to see Carl Schmitt as an incarnation of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor. During a stormy conversation at Plettenberg in 1980, Carl Schmitt told me that anyone who failed to see that the Grand Inquisitor was right about the sentimentality of Jesuitical piety had grasped neither what a Church was for, nor what Dostoevsky—contrary to his own conviction—had “really conveyed, compelled by the sheer force of the way in which he posed the problem.” I always read Carl Schmitt with interest, often captivated by his intellectual brilliance and pithy style. But in every word I sensed something alien to me, the kind of fear and anxiety one has before a storm, an anxiety that lies concealed in the secularized messianic dart of Marxism. Carl Schmitt seemed to me to be the Grand Inquisitor of all heretics.

More specifically, this book will try to establish the following points. First, there are not two great liberal social and political systems but three. One is democracy—political liberalism—by which we decide who is entitled to use force; another is capitalism—economic liberalism—by which we decide how to allocate resources. The third is liberal science, by which we decide who is right. Second, the third system has been astoundingly successful, not merely as a producer of technology but also, far more important, as a peacemaker and builder of social bridges. Its great advantages as a social system for raising and settling differences of opinion are inherent, not incidental. However, its disadvantages—it causes pain and suffering, it creates legions of losers and outsiders, it is disorienting and unsettling, it allows and even thrives on prejudice and bias—are also inherent. And today it is once again under attack. Third, the attackers seek to undermine the two social rules which make liberal science possible. (I’ll outline them in the next chapter and elaborate them in the rest of the book.) For the system to function, people must try to follow those rules even if they would prefer not to. Unfortunately, many people are forgetting them, ignoring them, or carving out exemptions. That trend must be fought, because, fourth, the alternatives to liberal science lead straight to authoritarianism. And intellectual authoritarianism, although once the province of the religious and the political right in America, is now flourishing among the secular and the political left. Fifth, behind the new authoritarian push are three idealistic impulses: Fundamentalists want to protect the truth. Egalitarians want to help the oppressed and let in the excluded. Humanitarians want to stop verbal violence and the pain it causes. The three impulses are now working in concert. Sixth, fundamentalism, properly understood, is not about religion. It is about the inability to seriously entertain the possibility that one might be wrong. In individuals such fundamentalism is natural and, within reason, desirable. But when it becomes the foundation for an intellectual system, it is inherently a threat to freedom of thought. Seventh, there is no way to advance knowledge peacefully and productively by adhering to the principles advocated by egalitarians and humanitarians. Their principles are poisonous to liberal science and ultimately to peace and freedom. Eighth, no social principle in the world is more foolish and dangerous than the rapidly rising notion that hurtful words and ideas are a form of violence or torture (e.g., “harassment”) and that their perpetrators should be treated accordingly. That notion leads to the criminalization of criticism and the empowerment of authorities to regulate it. The new sensitivity is the old authoritarianism in disguise, and it is just as noxious.

Perhaps the elements of memory in plants are superficially treated," he writes, "but at least there they are in black and white! Yet no one calls his friends or neighbors, no one shouts in a drunken voice over the telephone: Have you heard the news? Plants can feel! They can feel pain! They cry out! Plants remember everything!" When Soloukhin began to telephone his own friends in excitement he learned from one of them that a prominent member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, working in Akademgorodok, the new town inhab­ ited almost exclusively by research scientists on the outskirts of Siberia's largest industrial center, Novosibirsk, had stated: Don't be amazed! We too are carrying out many experiments of this kind and they all point to one thing: plants have memory. They are able to gather impressions and retain them over long periods. We had a man molest, even torture, a geranium for several days in a row. He pinched it, tore it, pricked its leaves with a needle, dripped acid on its living tissues, burned it with a lighted match, and cut its roots. Another man took tender care of the same geranium, watered it, worked its soil, sprayed it with fresh water, supported its heavy branches, and treated its burns and wounds. When we electroded our instruments to the plant, what do you think? No sooner did the torturer come near the plant than the recorder of the instrument began to go wild. The plant didn't just get "nervous"; it was afraid, it was horrified. If it could have, it would have either thrown itself out the window or attacked its torturer. Hardly had this inquisitor left and the good man taken his place near the plant than the geranium was appeased, its impulses died down, the recorder traced out smooth­ one might almost say tender-lines on the graph.

Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent. He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he’d collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men’s knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth. What’s a suzerain? A keeper. A keeper or overlord. Why not say keeper then? Because he is a special kind of keeper. A suzerain rules even where there are other rulers. His authority countermands local judgements. Toadvine spat. The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation. Toadvine sat with his boots crossed before the fire. No man can acquaint himself with everthing on this earth, he said. The judge tilted his great head. The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate. I dont see what that has to do with catchin birds. The freedom of birds is an insult to me. I’d have them all in zoos. That would be a hell of a zoo. The judge smiled. Yes, he said. Even so.

But that's life. One adventure, one test, one option after another. We have free will and what we choose determines the kind of person we are, what kind of life we have. It's the difficulties we overcome that give our life meaning and value. The greater the obstacle, the more you can grow to rise above it.

People who like authoritarianism always picture themselves running the show. But no one stays on top for long.

Shh...," He says. "They're not laughing at you. They're laughing at each other, for not knowing something a little boy knew all along." Jacob rubs the boy's cheek. "See? You should have a beard. You know more than all these old men put together.

In the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv, written in large letters on the wall, I saw the answer: “A rabbi whose community does not disagree with him is not really a rabbi, and a rabbi who fears his community is not really a man.” The quotation is from Rabbi Israel Salanter, who died six years before Hitler was born; he flourished in Lithuania and Russia, so almost certainly some of his descendants died in the Nazis’ hell fires. I don’t know what he would say about Holocaust “revisionism” if he were alive today, but I do know that those words of his are displayed in the Museum of the Diaspora because the critical spirit they embody is the only spirit that can save the Jews, and the rest of us, from political meddling with history.

Some ideas actually are false, and at some point the process of checking establishes their falsehood so firmly that to proceed as if they might be true becomes ridiculous. For

The greater threat lies in our letting down our guard against ourselves: in high-mindedly embracing authoritarianism in the name of fairness and compassion, as the Marxists did. Having been at last rousted out of politics and economics by the disaster of communism, the authoritarian Rasputin has now come calling on liberal science, and he already has his foot in the door.

liberal science is nothing other than a selection process whose mission is to test beliefs and reject the ones that fail.

The liberation of the human mind,” H. L. Mencken once wrote, “has been best furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe—that the god in the sanctuary was a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.

The skeptical rule is, No one gets the final say: you may claim that a statement is established as knowledge only if it can be debunked, in principle, and only insofar as it withstands attempts to debunk it.

This is, more or less, what the great twentieth-century philosopher of science Karl R. Popper and his followers have called the principle of falsifiability. Science is distinctive, not because it proves true statements, but because it seeks systematically to disprove (falsify) false ones.

Second, the empirical rule. If people follow it in deciding who is right and who is wrong, then no one gets special say simply on the basis of who he happens to be. The empirical rule is, No one has personal authority: you may claim that a statement has been established as knowledge only insofar as the method used to check it gives the same result regardless of the identity of the checker, and regardless of the source of the statement.

Those two rules define a decision-making system which people can agree to use to figure out whose opinions are worth believing. Under this system, you can do anything you wish to test a statement, as long as you follow the rules, which effectively say: • The system may not fix the outcome in advance or for good (no final say). • The system may not distinguish between participants (no personal authority).

There is nothing like absolute certainty in the whole field of our knowledge,” writes Popper.

Locke preached the sermon which every generation learns with such difficulty and forgets with such ease: “We should do well to commiserate our mutual ignorance, and endeavor to remove it in all the gentle and fair ways of information, and not instantly treat others ill, as obstinate and perverse, because they will not renounce their own, and receive our opinions. . . . For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns?

we all benefit enormously from living in a society which is rich with prejudices, because strong opinions, however biased or wrongheaded, energize debate.

stamping out prejudice inevitably means making everybody share the same prejudice

It seemed stupid that I had stayed in the cold stone room, knowing that as soon as the new day had crested, I was no longer in the Inquisitor’s service and no longer had to follow his orders. I finished eating and opened the package, revealing the complicated sections of leather pieces that somehow made up an outfit. Some of the sections were hardened with inlaid metal, a tarnished golden colour peeking through the stitching. I finally discerned something resembling the usual bodysuits worn beneath sectorian women’s clothing, though this one was different. It was thick brown leather, a silk underlining hidden on the inside. It moulded tightly to the body, two ovals cut into the sides, exposing the hips and the sides of the stomach and back. Some sort of covering fit over the top of the bodysuit, ending a few inches above the waist. The metal-inlaid patterns curved around the front of my chest and the top of my spine, connected with brown, buckled straps along my sides. A belted skirt slid over the hips, the belt pulling along the cut of the bodysuit, above my hips, another band looping around my hips. The skirt had two short layers. Yet another section of the outfit fit over my shoulders, metallic glimpses peering out from the leather that cupped my shoulders, attaching to the upper chest armour with straps. Another set of wraps covered my wrists and forearms, and I was glad to see the Inquisitor’s mark and the Spider’s mark disappearing from view. I was able to re-wear the same footwear, as there were also knee and thigh wraps in the same boiled brown leather that complemented the knee-high boots. The outfit was clearly some kind of warrior’s uniform. The Vold—and the Sentinels in particular—often wore revealing, scant clothing to show off their impressive physiques. With Calder’s cloak still on the ground, I could see half of his bare back above the golden armour that wrapped his torso. The muscles bunched and stretched as he pulled his forearm up for investigation. He had clearly stitched and re-dressed his wound after my dismal attempt at caring for it the night before. Despite my outfit showing so much skin, it was by far the heaviest thing I had ever worn, and I started to truly appreciate how quickly and silently Calder moved, weighed down as he must have been by so much armour. I tugged my hair over my shoulders, arranging the strands so that they might hide my face better. There was a lump in my throat when I stuffed everything back into my pack and muttered, “Done.

Persons who dismiss stories such as those of Keith John Sampson as merely “anecdotal” need to be reminded that the plural of “anecdote” is “data.

A basic principle of science—of liberal social life—is that we kill our hypotheses rather than each other.

The social system does not and never can exist which allows no harm to come to anybody. Conflict of impulse and desire is an inescapable fact of human existence, and where there is conflict there will always be losers and wounds. Utopian systems premised on a world of loving harmony—communism, for instance—fail because in the attempt to obliterate conflict they obliterate freedom. The chore of a social regime is not to obliterate conflict but to manage it, so as to put it to good use while causing a minimum of hurt and abuse. Liberal systems, although far from perfect, have at least two great advantages: they can channel conflict rather than obliterate it, and they give a certain degree of protection from centrally administered abuse. The liberal intellectual system is no exception. It causes pain to people whose views are criticized, still more to those whose views fail to check out and so are rejected. But there are two important consolations. First, no one gets to run the system to his own advantage or stay in charge for long. Whatever you can do to me, I can do to you. Those who are criticized may give as good as they get. Second, the books are never closed, and the game is never over. Sometimes rejected ideas (continental drift, for one) make sensational comebacks.

[No] social principle in the world is more foolish and dangerous than the rapidly rising notion that hurtful words and ideas are a form of violence or torture (e.g., “harassment”) and that their perpetrators should be treated accordingly. That notion leads to the criminalization of criticism and the empowerment of authorities to regulate it. The new sensitivity is the old authoritarianism in disguise, and it is just as noxious.

They were all afraid of him, which he liked rather a lot. They didn’t know exactly what he was, only that he was implacable and cruel. His kind was new to the galaxy, a fresh weapon for the dark side to wield. His agents must follow his every order as though the Emperor himself had given it. That sort of power made him feel very strong.

Funny, how he’d been a tough Jedi and a kind Inquisitor, at least when it came to her.

Sixth, fundamentalism, properly understood, is not about religion. It is about the inability to seriously entertain the possibility that one might be wrong. In individuals such fundamentalism is natural and, within reason, desirable. But when it becomes the foundation for an intellectual system, it is inherently a threat to freedom of thought.

Impelled by the notions that science is oppression and criticism is violence, the central regulation of debate and inquiry is returning to respectability—this time in a humanitarian disguise.

A very dangerous principle is now being established as a social right: Thou shalt not hurt others with words.

If narratives like these are easy to overlook—or worse yet, to distort—then that is because our accustomed ways of hearing scripture often stop our ears to what is actually on the page. The old tape starts playing and we just let it run. This is one of the reasons why I remain a devoted student of the Bible: because what it says is so often not what I have been taught it says, or what I think it says, or what I want it to say. Scripture has its own voice—sometimes more terrible than wonderful—but it has never failed to reward my close attention, either with a fresh hearing or with the loud slamming of a door that tells me to come back later. Why persist? Because in a world where empires rise and fall, where legendary places of worship become museums, and where operating systems of all kinds have shorter and shorter life spans, the Bible offers me ballast that little else can. I turn to it the same way chemists turn to the periodic table or Supreme Court judges turn to the Constitution. It is my baseline in matters of faith—something far older than I am, with a great deal more experience in what it means to be both human and divine. There are times when I read the Bible literally—as when Moses complains about what a royal pain in the ass it is to be a religious leader, or when Jesus nails an inquisitor on his or her own iniquity—but on the whole I read it literarily, as the consummate work of divinely inspired human memory and imagination that I believe it is.