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 must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages.
Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science.
The future belongs to those who can rise above the confines of the earth.
With the sense of sight, the idea communicates the emotion, whereas, with sound, the emotion communicates the idea, which is more direct and therefore more powerful.
A philosopher of imposing stature doesn’t think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives.
The real history does not get written, because it is not in people’s brains but in their nerves and vitals.
There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain.
The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.
No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.
All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality.
When success turns a man’s head he faces failure.
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.
There is a technique, a knack, for thinking, just as there is for doing other things. You are not wholly at the mercy of your thoughts, any more than they are you. They are a machine you can learn to operate.
Nature, even in the act of satisfying anticipation, often provides a surprise.
A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the fine qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace.
By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.
Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure, a sense of nothing having been done before, of complete freedom to experiment...