How can you communicate your thoughts or demonstrate your hypotheses by conventional means when all the values and standards that you want to challenge are built into those means? Science and new technology today like to declare that they encourage 'lateral thinking,' new ways of seeing and putting data together - but all systems have an inbuilt resistance to what has not been programmed into them through the premises on which their rules are based.
Elizabeth JanewayThis is the power of the powerful to define, to structure, to say, 'This is the way the world works.' It's enormous power. Among the powers of the weak, I think the first one is the power not to believe the powerful.
Elizabeth JanewayThough we do not have many poets, we certainly have more than we deserve, for we deserve none at all. It is ourselves that we are hurting by our stupidity and ignorance of poetry.
Elizabeth JanewayIf there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come, there is nothing more ubiquitously pervasive than an idea whose time won't go.
Elizabeth JanewayIf history is really relevant in today's world, the proposition doesn't command much respect. Perhaps the past is a different country, but if so no one much wants to travel there.
Elizabeth Janeway