There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. To this chiefly it is owing that we find sects and parties in most branches of science [and politics]; and disputes that are carried on from age to age, without being brought to issue.
Interpretation
Ambiguity in language hinders our understanding and progress in knowledge and leads to persistent disputes.
In this quote, Thomas Reid argues that unclear language is a significant barrier to the advancement of knowledge. He suggests that the ambiguity of words produces confusion, which gives rise to divisions among people in various fields, including science and politics, resulting in unresolved disputes that can endure for generations.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of clear communication in science.
The laws of nature are the rules according to which the effects are produced; but there must be a cause which operates according to these rules. The laws of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house.
It appears evident, therefore, that those actions only can truly be called virtuous, and deserving of moral approbation, which the agent believed to be right, and to which he was influenced, more or less, by that belief.
Every indication of wisdom, taken from the effect, is equally an indication of power to execute what wisdom planned.
Let the historians and the Ph.D. students work out their doctrines. I'm not interested in theories per se.
Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.
Make me an instrument of thy peace.
And the greatest calamity that has happened to the human mind is that he is against death. Being against death means you will miss the greatest mystery. And being against death also means that you will miss life itself - because they are deeply involved into each other; they are not two. Life is growing, death is the flowering of it. The journey and the goal are not separate; the journey ends in the goal.
To say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards men.
Dreaming is a phenomenon of purely individual consciousness, and consequently impossible to thoroughly deconstruct by a community of researchers. But dreaming matters.
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