• When choosing the term ‘anarchism’ for my enterprise [to describe Science as anarchic instead of rational] I simply followed the general usage. However anarchism, as it has been practiced in the past and as it is being practiced today by an ever increasing number of people has features I am not prepared to support. It cares little for human lives and human happiness (except for the lives and happiness of those who belong to some special group); and it contains precisely the kind of Puritanical dedication and seriousness which I detest. (There are some exquisite exceptions such as Cohn-Bendit, but they are in the minority.) It is for these reasons that I now prefer to use the term Dadaism. A Dadaist would not hurt a fly—let alone a human being. A Dadaist is utterly unimpressed by any serious enterprise and he smells a rat whenever people stop smiling and assume that attitude and those facial expressions which indicate that something important is about to be said. A Dadaist is convinced that a worthwhile life will arise only when we start taking things lightly and when we remove from our speech the profound but already putrid meanings it has accumulated over the centuries (‘search for truth’; ‘defense of justice’; ‘passionate concern’; etc., etc.) A Dadaist is prepared to initiate joyful experiments even in those domains where change and experimentation seem to be out of the question (example: the basic functions of language). I hope that having read this, the reader will remember me as a flippant Dadaist and not as a serious anarchist.

- Paul Feyeraband