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Does truth matter—clean, cold, unfriendly truth, Max Gottlieb’s truth?
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“Does truth matter—clean, cold, unfriendly truth, Max Gottlieb’s truth?”

Sinclair Lewis

Source
Arrowsmith
Date
1925
Meaning

Meaning of “Does truth matter—clean, cold, unfriendly truth, Max Gottlieb’s…”

Martin questions whether his commitment to exact scientific truth is an ethical necessity or merely one personal passion among many competing human desires.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Arrowsmith, represented by Project Gutenberg #70875. The sentence is Martin Arrowsmith’s internal question during a conflict over public-health claims and scientific precision; it is fictional moral-scientific reflection, not medical advice.

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DeepShortThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionTruthKnowledgeReason
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It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
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“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”

Arthur Conan Doyle · A Scandal in Bohemia · 1891
Meaning & context

Holmes argues that explanations should follow evidence because an early theory can tempt a person to force later facts into a preferred story.

Source details

“A Scandal in Bohemia,” The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891), Project Gutenberg #1661. Holmes immediately warns that premature theorizing leads people to twist facts to suit theories; it is fictional detective dialogue.

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A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.
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“A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.”

David Hume · An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding · 1748
Meaning & context

Hume argues that confidence should rise or fall with the strength and consistency of the available evidence rather than remain fixed regardless of what experience supports.

Source details

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, ‘Of Miracles,’ Part I, paragraph 87 in the represented Selby-Bigge text, Project Gutenberg #9662. ‘A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence’ follows Hume's discussion of varying degrees of assurance from experience. It is eighteenth-century epistemological argument and preserves the connective ‘therefore’; it is not a complete modern statistical or scientific decision rule.

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I neither know nor think that I know.
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“I neither know nor think that I know.”

Plato · Apology · c. 399 BCE setting
Voice: Dialogue speaker · Socrates
Meaning & context

Socrates locates a small advantage in recognizing the boundary of his own knowledge: uncertainty is intellectually healthier than possessing the same ignorance while mistaking it for wisdom.

Source details

Plato, Apology, Benjamin Jowett translation, Project Gutenberg #1656. Socrates says this after examining a politician whom others considered wise; the wording is dialogue speech attributed to Socrates within Plato’s work, not a claim that Socrates knew literally nothing.

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I am not young enough to know everything.
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“I am not young enough to know everything.”

J. M. Barrie · The Admirable Crichton · 1902
Meaning & context

Barrie reverses the cliché that age brings complete wisdom, making youthful certainty—not age—the comic claim to omniscience.

Source details

The Admirable Crichton, Act I, Project Gutenberg #3490. Ernest Woolley repeatedly delivers “I am not young enough to know everything” as a self-consciously clever epigram while Agatha, Treherne and the others struggle to understand it; Crichton later says he has no idea what Ernest meant. It remains fictional comic dialogue rather than J. M. Barrie autobiography or a factual claim about age and knowledge.

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A hasty judgement is a first step to a recantation.
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“A hasty judgement is a first step to a recantation.”

Publilius Syrus · The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus · 1856 translation
Meaning & context

Rushing to a conclusion increases the chance that later evidence will force an embarrassing or costly reversal.

Source details

The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, maxim 8, in Darius Lyman’s 1856 English rendering; maxim order can vary across editions.

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Nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know.
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“Nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know.”

Michel de Montaigne · Essays of Montaigne — Book I · 1580
Meaning & context

Certainty can be strongest where understanding is weakest, so confidence by itself is poor evidence that a belief has been examined well.

Source details

Essays of Montaigne, Book I, Chapter XXXI, ‘That a Man Is Soberly to Judge of the Divine Ordinances,’ Charles Cotton translation edited by William Carew Hazlitt (1877); Project Gutenberg Volume 06 #3586 / Complete Essays #3600. The sentence appears in Montaigne’s skeptical warning about confidence concerning unknown things and speculative claims about divine purposes.