Incompleteness Quotes

“The necessary incompleteness of even our formal systems of thought demonstrates that there is no nonshifting foundation on which any system rests. All truths — even those that had seemed so certain as to be immune to the very possibility of revision — are essentially manufactured. Indeed the very notion of the objectively true is a socially constructed myth. Our knowing minds are not embedded in truth. Rather the entire notion of truth is embedded in our minds, which are themselves the unwitting lackeys of organizational forms of influence.”
― Rebecca Goldstein, Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel

“No validation of our rationality - of our very sanity - can be accomplished using our rationality itself. How can a person operating within a system of beliefs, including beliefs about beliefs, get outside that system to determine whether it is rational? If your entire system becomes infected with madness, including the very rules by which you reason, then how can you ever reason your way out of your madness?”
― Rebecca Goldstein, Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel

“Einstein’s and Gödel’s metaconvictions were addressed to the question of whether their respective fields are descriptions of an objective reality—existing independent of our thinking of it—or, rather, are subjective human projections, socially shared intellectual constructs.”
― Rebecca Goldstein, Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel

“The secret of the demagogue is to appear as dumb as his audience so that these people can believe themselves as smart as he is.”
― Rebecca Goldstein, Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel

“inside out, with all the Sturm und”
― Rebecca Goldstein, Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel

“The psychoanalyst picks our dreams as if they were our pockets.” “The secret of the demagogue is to appear as dumb as his audience so that these people can believe themselves as smart as he is.”
― Rebecca Goldstein, Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel

“The necessary incompleteness of even our formal systems of thought demonstrates that there is no non-shifting foundation on which any system rests. [...] Our knowing minds are not embedded in truth. Rather the entire notion of truth is embedded in our minds[.]”
― Rebecca Goldstein, Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel