The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article on "evidence" takes a remark of A.J. Ayer's as an epigraph: "For my own part, I think that if one were looking for a single phrase to capture the stage to which philosophy has progressed, ‘the study of evidence’ would be a better choice than ‘the study of language’."

We might say that modern poetics is likewise the study of fabrication. "Il miglior fabbro" and all that.

People don't kill people; God kills people. If it were up to us there'd be no end of murder. There's too much hate and greed in us. No, let us leave it to God, who loves us and wants for nothing. One day, he'll stop killing us forever.

To understand an ideal is simply to obey. There is nothing more to see. Likewise, to "obey reality" is but to understand it. That's all it's asking you to do.

(More here.)

Be honest in your knowledge,
         decent in your power.
Neither truth nor justice
are yours entire. The world is
everything that is the case.
History is all that happens.
Your place is not for you
to choose, nor is the side.

Scientists seek the authority to state facts.
Politicians seek the authority to order acts.

To this end, scientists develop methods
politicians procure mandates, i.e., authority.

A method does not ensure truth, nor does
a mandate guarantee that justice will be done.

Authority is not an end in itself but a means
to assign responsibility when error occurs.

Faith keeps you from despair over what others believe.

You have a right to be angry.
Any rage you contain will be turned
against you in the theatre
of your own mind. You have a right
to talk to a friend before you act
on your impulses. Your friend may
stay the night with you. Or not.
If you cannot afford to lose
your friend, you may take a
a lover — one who feeds upon your
peerless eyes and lets you rave.

Power/knowledge can't be mastered,
can't be known, obeyed, or understood.

We imagine we resist and,
in imagination, it insists.

To let the rain come
for its own dumb sake
and not because it is
good for the farmers,
that is what the mud
has been teaching us
all these many years.

At dawn, the moon,
to the west, through the trees.
Of course, it is full.

Facts must have sufficient reason;
acts, excessive passion.

Philosophy is always a reflection on science.
Poetry is always a refusal of politics.

Philosophy appropriates what is always already ours.
Poetry disowns what we will never possess.

We disappoint, not by
failing to be
what the others thought we
were. But by
becoming something other
than they hoped.

Logos shapes belief. (Logos is the form of belief.)
Pathos hones desire. (Pathos is the edge of desire.)

Keep your beliefs strong and your desires sharp.

We are inclined to think that history is either dialectical or diabolical, that it is either the ongoing resolution of tensions between impersonal forces or an occult conspiracy of highly motivated people. Given the evidence, we are not able to decide among these theories. It is even possible that there is some truth in both. What does not occur to us, however, is the possibility that history is divine, providential: that it expresses perfectly God's vision of his creation, his curiosity about what he has made. He, too, is waiting to see what happens next.

It is important, afterall,
that knowledge isn't merely
of accidental facts,
and power isn't just
for necessary acts.

Science tells us what is
actually the case, what
must be so. And politics
transforms the possible,
nowhere to otherwise.

No heart is left untouched
nor is the mind unchanged.

Nothing hinges on the philosopher's wisdom,
just as nothing hinges on the poet's love.

Beliefs are states of mind,
desires
              changes
                            of the heart,
and the body is a place
in which to find a moment
wherein this wherewithal
we call the self compounds
whatever we already are
with what we can become.

In intuition, a belief forms immediately,
in institution, a desire. Science shapes
our intuitions, as politics, our institutions.
Philosophy and poetry give them presence,
as concepts in thought, emotions in feeling,
each remark, each strophe, on the imagination.

Let us imagine the sage, whose concepts
are clear, the lover, whose emotions are
always taut. Let us imagine a mind
stilled by wisdom, and a heart moved
by love. Let us imagine a body
whose flesh and bones are strong,
a soul whose suffering is pure.
Let us imagine a passion that is
general, and one specific reason
to believe that all that we desire
can be made small and (imagine this!)
put within the nutshell of a dream.
Imagination backs thought with feeling,
brings appearance to the surfaces.