I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.
Planning for the future without a sense of history is like planting cut flowers.
The image is made to order, tailored to us. An ideal, on the hand, has a claim on us. It does not serve us, we serve it. If we have trouble striding toward it, we assume the matter is with us, and not the ideal.
Dispersed as the Jews are, they still form one nation, foreign to the land they live in.
Standing, standing, standing – why do I have to stand all the time? That is the main characteristic of social Washington.
Formerly, a public man needed a private secretary for a barrier between himself and the public. Nowadays he has a press secretary, to keep him properly in the public eye.
We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.
Knowledge is not simply another commodity. On the contrary. Knowledge is never used up. It increases by diffusion and grows by dispersion.
Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.
If our knowledge is, as I believe, only an island in an infinite sea of ignorance, how can we in our short lifetime find satisfaction in exploring our little island? How can we persuade ourselves to be exhilarated by our meager knowledge and yet not be discouraged by the ocean vistas?
The hero was distinguished by his achievement; the celebrity by his image or trademark. The hero created himself; the celebrity is created by the media. The hero was a big man; the celebrity is a big name.
While the easiest way in metaphysics is to condemn all metaphysics as nonsense, the easiest way in morals is to elevate the common practice of the community into a moral absolute.
The Republic of Technology where we will be living is a feedback world.
There is no disinfectant like success.
As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.
Since the Creator had made the facts of the after-life inaccessible to man, He must not have required that man understand death in order to live fruitfully.
In the twentieth century our highest praise is to call the Bible ‘The World’s Best Seller.’ And it has come to be more and more difficult to say whether we think it is a best seller because it is great, or vice versa.
There is no known device for artistic contraception.
The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
The Christian test was a willingness to believe in the one Jesus Christ and His Message of salvation. What was demanded was not criticism but credulity. The Church Fathers observed that in the realm of thought only heresy had a history.