Sēngcàn (Seng-ts'an), quoted by Jonathan Haidt in The moral roots of liberals and conservatives, TED2008, 15:28
From Haidt's talk
If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be 'for' or 'against.' The struggle between 'for' and 'against' is the mind's worst disease.
--- Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State (1946, 1988), in a section titled "Demand, Medium, Trade" (h/t Matt Nesselrodt). From Gutenberg.org:
In the earliest period of European railway construction some "practical" people were of the opinion that it was foolish to build certain lines "because there were not even sufficient passengers to fill the mail-coaches." They did not realize the truth—which now seems obvious to us—that travellers do not produce railways, but, conversely, railways produce travellers, the latent demand, of course, is taken for granted.
Frank Luntz, Interview, PBS, 15 December 2003, quoted by Galen Strawson, "Blockers and laughter: panpsychism, archepsychism, pantachepsychism" 2024 (draft, academia.edu)
Quote of Luntz from the Strawson essay:
I've got a certain rule that I always teach my staff: It's not what you say; it's what people hear that matters. I may respond to you effectively, but if you edit it in such a way that they only hear the negativity of what I do, then that's all they're going to know. And so they're going to conclude that my profession isn't an honorable profession. And that's why how I say it has as much of an impact on what people think of me as what I say.
[Regarding consistency,] there's a simple rule: You say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and then again and again and again and again, and about the time that you're absolutely sick of saying it is about the time that your target audience has heard it for the first time. And it is so hard, but you've just got to keep repeating, because we hear so many different things -- the noises from outside, the sounds, all the things that are coming into our head, the 200 cable channels and the satellite versus cable, and what we hear from our friends. We as Americans and as humans have very selective hearing and very selective memory. We only hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest.
--- Yossi Klein Halevi, in For Israel, a "War Unlike Any Other," WSJ Saturday Essay, Nov 3, 2023
First line in the piece:
The Israeli psyche resembles an archaeological site of layers of unresolved traumas, ordinary life interrupted by history. Still, none of the previous wars and terror assaults and missile barrages that I’ve lived through in my four decades as an Israeli has quite prepared me for this moment of rage, dread, uncertainty, resolve.
