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Anthony Terence Quincey Stewart Quotes

If we are to understand anything of the human mind we must approach the people of the past with humility rather than an overconfident superiority.

If we are to understand anything of the human mind we must approach the people of the past with humility rather than an overconfident superiority.

Anthony Terence Quincey Stewart
Humility, Past, People
Anthony Terence Quincey Stewart (2001). “The Shape of Irish History”

The past is dead, and nothing that we can choose to believe about it can harm or benefit those who were alive in it. On the other hand, it has the power to harm us.

Anthony Terence Quincey Stewart
Believe, Past, Hands
Anthony Terence Quincey Stewart (2001). “The Shape of Irish History”

The phrase 'contrary to all expectations' rings through the story of the progress of human knowledge. It was 'contrary to all expectations' that the Earth was found to revolve around the sun, and not the other way round, and that a mould growing in one of Dr. Alexander Fleming's dishes was found to be capable of destroying bacteria. When in 1989 the spacecraft Voyager 2 got close enough to the planet Naptune to take detailed pictures of the surface, they were 'contrary to all expectations'.

Anthony Terence Quincey Stewart
Science, Expectations, Progress

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