Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen; times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals.
Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.
The worship of God is not a rule of safety - it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable.
Governments are best classified by considering who are the 'somebodies' they are in fact endeavouring to satisfy.
It is not paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.
The fixed person for the fixed duties who in older societies was such a godsend, in future will be a public danger.
You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.
Mathematics, in its widest significance, is the development of all types of formal, necessary, deductive reasoning.
Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.
On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake.
Every epoch has its character determined by the way its population reacts to the material events which they encounter.
The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operation of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish.
Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world.
[In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting.
The whole of mathematics consists in the organization of a series of aids to the imagination in the process of reasoning.
Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't.
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil.
Human nature loses its most precious quality when it is robbed of its sense of things beyond, unexplored and yet insistent.
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.
Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much; Milton, I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry.
The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.
To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.
That knowledge which adds greatness to character is knowledge so handled as to transform every phase of immediate experience.
People make the mistake of talking about 'natural laws.' There are no natural laws. There are only temporary habits of nature.
After you understand about the sun and the stars and the rotation of the earth, you may still miss the radiance of the sunset.
Some of the finest moral intuitions come to quite humble people. The visiting of lofty ideas doesn't depend on formal schooling.
It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.
Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure, a sense of nothing having been done before, of complete freedom to experiment.
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
Without adventure all civilization is full of decay. Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China.
Style, in its finest sense, is the last acquirement of the educated mind; it is also the most useful. It pervades the whole being.
As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
The great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past. Only the adventurous can understand the greatness of the past.
All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.
It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.
Every organism requires an environment of friends, partly to shield it from violent changes, and partly to supply it with its wants.
Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made by its parent. It may assent to them, but it brings them out in the open.
The physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus .
The learned tradition is not concerned with truth, but with the learned adjustment of learned statements of antecedent learned people.
What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.
It is impossible to meditate on time and the mystery of nature without an overwhelming emotion at the limitations of human intelligence.
Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications.
Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
Philosophy is the product of wonder. The effort after the general characterization of the world around us is the romance of human thought.