A Quote by Noam Chomsky

These are questions for action, not speculation, which is idle.

Noam Chomsky

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Action Idle Questions Speculation Which

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Noam Chomsky
American - Activist
Born: December 7, 1928

Nostalgia often leads to idle speculation.

J. Paul Getty

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

Bertrand Russell

When the idle poor become the idle rich, you'll never know just who is who, or which is which.

E. Y. Harburg

EVERY intention which does not assert itself by deeds is a vain intention, and the speech which expresses it is idle speech. It is action which proves life and establishes will

Eliphas Levi

An unauthentic word, one which is unable to transform reality, results when dichotomy is imposed upon its constitutive elements. When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, reflection automatically suffers as well; and the word is changed into idle chatter, into verbalism, into an alienated and alienating “blah.” It becomes an empty word, one which cannot denounce the world, for denunciation is impossible without a commitment to transform, and there is no transformation without action.

Paulo Freire

Too many composers become involved in intellectual speculation which seems to matter more to them than the sound that comes out of all this speculation.

Louise Talma

When the idle poor, Become the idle rich, You'll never know, Just who is who, Or who is which.

Yip Harburg

Which questions guide our lives? Which questions do we make our own? Which questions deserve our undivided and full personal commitment? Finding the right questions is crucial to finding the answers.

Henri Nouwen

I'm a novelist, and idle speculation is what novelists do. How odd to spend one's life trying to pretend that non-existent people are real: though no odder, I suppose, than what government bureaucrats do, which is trying to pretend that real people are non-existent.

Margaret Atwood

All the questions, all the speculation, No. 2 driver and so on, it doesn't get to me. It doesn't matter.

Valtteri Bottas

speculation is carried on in safety, but, when it comes to action, fear causes failure.

Thucydides

Asking the proper questions is the central action of transformation. Questions are the key that causes the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The fear of speculation, the ostensible rush from the theoretical to the practical, brings about the same shallowness in action that it does in knowledge. It is by studying a strictly theoretical philosophy that we become most acquainted with Ideas, and only Ideas provide action with vigour and ethical meaning.

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

The end of knowledge is power ... the scope of all speculation is the performing of some action or thing to be done.

Thomas Hobbes

From the dawn of exact knowledge to the present day, observation, experiment, and speculation have gone hand in hand; and, whenever science has halted or strayed from the right path, it has been, either because its votaries have been content with mere unverified or unverifiable speculation (and this is the commonest case, because observation and experiment are hard work, while speculation is amusing); or it has been, because the accumulation of details of observation has for a time excluded speculation.

Thomas Huxley

My rule in making up examination questions is to ask questions which I can't myself answer. It astounds me to see how some of my students answer questions which would play the deuce with me.

Henry Adams

A Quote by Noam Chomsky

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