Our Belief In Any Particular

Science Is Not A System Of Certain, Or -established, Statements; Nor Is It A System Which Steadily Advances Towards A State Of Finality... And Our Guesses Are Guided By The Unscientific, The Metaphysical (though Biologically Explicable) Faith In Laws, In Regularities Which We Can Uncover-discover. Like Bacon, We Might Describe Our Own Contemporary Science-'the Method Of Reasoning Which Men Now Ordinarily Apply To Nature'-as Consisting Of 'anticipations, Rash And Premature' And As 'prejudices'.

The Fundamental Thing About Human Languages Is That They Can And Should Be Used To Describe Something; And This Something Is, Somehow, The World. To Be Constantly And Almost Exclusively Interested In The Medium - In Spectacle-cleaning - Is A Result Of A Philosophical Mistake.

When We Enter A New Situation In Life And Are Confronted By A New Person, We Bring With Us The Prejudices Of The Past And Our Previous Experiences Of People. These Prejudices We Project Upon The New Person. Indeed, Getting To Know A Person Is Largely A Matter Of Withdrawing Projections; Of Dispelling The Smoke Screen Of What We Imagine He Is Like And Replacing It With The Reality Of What He Is Actually Like.

A Theory Which Is Not Refutable By Any Conceivable Event Is Non-scientific. Irrefutability Is Not A Virtue Of A Theory (as People Often Think) But A Vice.

Unlimited Tolerance Must Lead To The Disappearance Of Tolerance. If We Extend Unlimited Tolerance Even To Those Who Are Intolerant, If We Are Not Prepared To Defend A Tolerant Society, Then The Tolerant Will Be Destroyed, And Tolerance With Them. We Should Therefore Claim, In The Name Of Tolerance, The Right Not To Tolerate The Intolerant.