There is no greater hindrance to the progress of thought than an attitude of irritated party-spirit.
Philosophy asks the simple question: What is it all about?
In order to acquire learning, we must first shake ourselves free of it.
No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality.
Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.
It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.
In every age of well-marked transition, there is the pattern of habitual dumb practice and emotion which is passing and there is oncoming a new complex of habit.
Fertilization of the soul is the reason for the necessity of art.
A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it, that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied, he is content.
Without adventure all civilization is full of decay. Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China.
Error itself may be happy chance.
The difference between ancients and moderns is that the ancients asked what have we experienced, and moderns asked what can we experience.
There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life; and when we include the quality in the fact, there is still omitted the quality of the quality.
Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God.
The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.
The only justification in the use of force is to reduce the amount of force necessary to be used.
Not a sentence or a word is independent of the circumstances under which it is uttered.
It is impossible to meditate on time and the mystery of nature without an overwhelming emotion at the limitations of human intelligence.
To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.
Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration. We must not expect, however, all the virtues.