Some 4th of July thoughts, reprinted from a few years ago, and still (as ever) relevant:
This, at least, I have observed in forty-five years: that there are men who search for it [truth], whatever it is, wherever it may lie, patiently, honestly, with due humility, and that there are other men who battle endlessly to put it down, even though they don’t know what it is. To the first class belong the scientists, the experimenters, the men of curiosity. To the second belong politicians, bishops, professors, mullahs, tin pot messiahs, frauds and exploiters of all sorts – in brief, the men of authority. . .All I find there is a vast enmity to the free functioning of the spirit of man. There may be, for all I know, some truth there, but it is truth made into whips, rolled into bitter pills. . .
I find myself out of sympathy with such men. I shall keep on challenging them until the last galoot’s ashore.
– H. L. Mencken, “Off the Grand Banks”, 1925
In those days the New York dockers were renowned for their truculence, inefficiency and sheer slowness. Four hours was supposed to be the standard and we got the standard. Neverthless, the difference from the British equivalent did not strike me as very marked, and by the time we sailed out into the dusk. . .among the wondrous multi-colored lights of the New Jersey Turnpike, at that time utterly unparalleled at home – by then I knew. . .that this was my second country and always would be.. . .I only ever spent a few nights in (New York City), but made a lot of day and evening trips and saw quite enough of the place to convince me that anyone who makes a business of hating it or being superior to it, and there were plenty then, home-grown and foreign, is a creep, and that anyone who walks up Fifth Avenue (say) on a sunny morning without feeling his spirits lift is an ***hole.
– Kingsley Amis, “Memoirs”, 1991
There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. … Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1949
