The Open Society, The Unrestricted Access To

I Am Become Death, The Destroyer Of Worlds.

All History Teaches Us That These Questions That We Think The Pressing Ones Will Be Transmuted Before They Are Answered, That They Will Be Replaced By Others, And That The Very Process Of Discovery Will Shatter The Concepts That We Today Use To Describe Our Puzzlement.

We Do Not Believe Any Group Of Men Adequate Enough Or Wise Enough To Operate Without Scrutiny Or Without Criticism. We Know That The Only Way To Avoid Error Is To Detect It, That The Only Way To Detect It Is To Be Free To Inquire. We Know That In Secrecy Error, Undetected, Will Flourish And Subvert.

This Is A World In Which Each Of Us, Knowing His Limitations, Knowing The Evils Of Superficiality And The Terrors Of Fatigue, Will Have To Cling To What Is Close To Him, To What He Knows, To What He Can Do. . .

Everyone Wants Rather To Be Pleasing To Women And That Desire Is Not Altogether, Though It Is Very Largely, A Manifestation Of Vanity. But One Cannot Aim To Be Pleasing To Women Any More Than One Can Aim To Have Taste, Or Beauty Of Expression, Or Happiness; For These Things Are Not Specific Aims Which One May Learn To Attain; They Are Descriptions Of The Adequacy Of One's Living. To Try To Be Happy Is To Try To Build A Machine With No Other Specification Than That It Shall Run Noiselessly.