A Quote by Robert Anton Wilson
Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only look in one encyclopedia.
Related Quotes
Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only own one encyclopedia.
[My wife] liked to collect old encyclopedias from second-hand bookstores, and at one point we had eight of them. When I wrote my first historical novel---back in 1980, before I was online---I used them often as a research tool. For instance, I learned that the Bastille was either 90 feet high or 100 feet or 120 feet. This led me to formulate Wilson's 22nd Law: 'Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only look in one encyclopedia.'
The bread which you hold back belongs to the hungry; the coat, which you guard in your locked storage-chests, belongs to the naked; the footwear mouldering in your closet belongs to those without shoes. The silver that you keep hidden in a safe place belongs to the one in need. Thus, however many are those whom you could have provided for, so many are those whom you wrong.
I think we may very well, in many areas, get likelihood, but not certitude. We don't want certitude anyway, do we?
No hero is a hero if he ever killed someone! Only the man who has not any blood in his hand can be a real hero! The honour of being a hero belongs exclusively to the peaceful people!
We live in a world in which data convey authority. But authority has a way of descending to certitude, and certitude begets hubris.
On those remote pages [of 'a certain Chinese encyclopedia'] it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f ) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.
For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors - between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.
My life belongs to me, my love belongs to those who can see it.
If grace belongs to God, there are those who say that luck belongs to the Devil and that he looks after his own.
We still live in a world in which a significant fraction of people, including women, believe that a woman belongs and wants to belong exclusively in the home.
Me, I'm an encyclopedia. I'm not a very smart guy, but I'm an encyclopedia. You can ask me about anything you want. Probably I have the book; probably I have a first edition.
I'm a book guy first, and my education came from two encyclopedias. One was an encyclopedia of health, so I became morbidly obsessed with anatomy, and I thought I had trichinosis, an aneurism, jaundice! And then an encyclopedia of art.
Will there ever be an encyclopedia? Possibly. I would say two things about the encyclopedia: firstly, I’ve always said and I stand by it, whenever I do do a printed encyclopedia I would like all the proceeds to go to charity. Back in 1998 I never dreamt I personally I would be in the position that I could set up a large charitable foundation and personally do things for charity, and I’ve done other charity books already.
Certitude is seized by some minds, not because there is any philosophical justification for it, but because such minds have an emotional need for certitude.
Responding to emails during off-work hours isn't the only area in which you need to set boundaries. You need to make the critical distinction between what belongs to your employer and what belongs to you and you only.
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