I do believe states rights was a sound doctrine that got hijacked by some unsavory customers for a while – like, 150 years or so. Im professionally obliged to believe that knowledge is better than ignorance, but some kinds of forgetting are OK with me. – John Shelton Reed

There is no stopping the worlds tendency to throw off imposed restraints, the religious authority that is based on the ignorance of the many, the political authority that is based on the knowledge of the few. – Van Wyck Brooks

Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials. – Avicenna