Peace is self-control at its widest-at the width where the “self” has been lost, and interest has been transferred to coordinations wider than personality.
The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning.
That knowledge which adds greatness to character is knowledge so handled as to transform every phase of immediate experience.
Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity.
You think the world is what it looks like in fine weather at noon day; I think it is what it seems like in the early morning when one first wakes from deep sleep.
Identification of rhythm as the casual counterpart of life; wherever there is some life, only perceptible to us when the analogies are sufficiently close.
Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.
A man of science doesn’t discover in order to know, he wants to know in order to discover.
You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.
No science can be more secure than the unconscious metaphysics which tacitly it presupposes.
It is natural to think that an abstract science cannot be of much importance in affairs of human life, because it has omitted from its consideration everything of real interest.
Youth is life as yet unblemished by much tragedy, but hardly by TV.
Problems are only opportunities in disquise.
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are cavalry charges in a battle – they are limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
The main importance of Francis Bacon’s influence does not lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning which he happened to express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he was a leader.
The worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed.
What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.
The purpose of education is not to fill a vessel but to kindle a flame.
Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications.
The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth-while.