We need not know a thing in order to be able to investigate and control it. Where knowledge is absent – and in an absolute sense we can know nothing – a vague working hypothesis is quite enough for all practical and even philosophical purposes.
The mind is its own place; she carried her hell about with her.
To understand sympathetically, with one’s whole beings, the state of mind of some one radically unlike oneself is very difficult – is, so far as I am concerned, impossible.
One must have some basis of experience on which to build an imagination.
To use the intelligence in any other than the habitual way is not to use the intelligence; it is to be irrational, to rave like a madman.
To criticise something imperfect is always amusing, and maybe profitable in those cases where the imperfections can be remedies.
We are unable to see the mind, and find it difficult in consequence to understand its nature.
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. WILLIAM BLAKE.
All human minds are not the same, that intelligence differs not only in degree, but to some extent also in kind.
La familiaridad engendra la indiferencia.
Ordinary men, we have seen, are not much interested in any political problems which do not immediately affect themselves.
To know a person’s character you must at least have talked with him, and unless you are gifted with remarkable intuitive insight you are not likely to know much about him unless you have seen him living and acting over a considerable period of time.
All men have similar sensations, but not all have similar intuitions.
How does he manifest himself now?” asked the Savage. “Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren’t there at all.
The Quakers pray as the spirit moves them; but to let oneself be moved by the spirit is an arduous business. Kindlier and more worldly churches, with a feeling for human weakness, provide their worshipers with rituals, litanies, beads and prayer wheels.
People are related to one another, not as total personalities, but as the embodiments of economic functions, or when they are not at work, as irresponsible seekers of entertainment. Subjected to this kind of life, individuals tend to feel lonely and insignificant. Their existence cases to have any point of meaning.
The most successful men are those who never admit the validity of other people’s opinions, who even deny their existence.
In spite of their sadness – because of it, even; for their sadness was the symptom of their love for one another – the three young men were happy.
Everything that happens is intrinsically like the man it happens to.
The people who make wars, the people who reduce their fellows to slavery, the people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, the really evil people in a word – these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they’re the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals.