Daily question, August 22, 2026

Politics

That government is best which governs least.

Source: A motto quoted by Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

States the minimal-government position as a motto, leaving the supporting argument to be supplied elsewhere.

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

Source: Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays

Russell defended mathematics as pure formal deduction from unproved axioms, detached from any fixed subject matter.

It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment.

Source: Paul Dirac, Scientific American, May 1963

Dirac's own equation predicted antimatter years before it was observed, part of why he trusted mathematical elegance so far.

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

Source: Abraham Maslow, The Psychology of Science

Maslow wrote this as a warning against a single method or theory colonizing every problem in psychology.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.

Source: Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Camus meant the real first question of philosophy is whether life is worth living, before any other question.

Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Source: Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

The book's final clause, describing a process still running rather than a history that finished with the forms alive today.