Every really new idea looks crazy at first.
Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.
Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self congratulation on the excellence of the human mind.
It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.
Do not teach too many subjects and what you teach, teach thoroughly.
Without adventure all civilization is full of decay. Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China.
The only justification in the use of force is to reduce the amount of force necessary to be used.
Religion is what a person does in his solitariness.
No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality.
The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The account of the sixth day should be written: He gave them speech, and they became souls.
Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.
I consider Christian theology to be one of the great disasters of the human race.
The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.
It is impossible to meditate on time and the mystery of nature without an overwhelming emotion at the limitations of human intelligence.
The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be ``Seek simplicity and distrust it.''
The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.
The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.
Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.
Some of the finest moral intuitions come to quite humble people. The visiting of lofty ideas doesn't depend on formal schooling.
Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science.
As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science.
The world is shocked, or amused, by the sight of saintly old people hindering in the name of morality the removal of obvious brutalities from a legal system.
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it.
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