A man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal as opposed to the conservative, who has both feet firmly planted in his mouth.
Since it is seldom clear whether intellectual activity denotes a superior mode of being or a vital deficiency, opinion swings between considering intellect a privilege and seeing it as a handicap.
Look for all fancy wordings and get rid of themAvoid all terms and expressions, old or new, that embody affectation.
Out of man’s mind in free play comes the creation Science. It renews itself, like the generations, thanks to an activity which is the best game of homo ludens: science is in the strictest and best sense a glorious entertainment.
The sole justification of teaching, of the school itself, is that the student comes out of it able to do something he could not do before. I say do and not know, because knowledge that doesn’t lead to doing something new or doing something better is not knowledge at all.
The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it. Teaching may look like administering a dose, but even a dose must be worked on by the body if it is to cure. Each individual must cure his or her own ignorance.
Tennis belongs to the individualistic past – a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world.
Take a portion of wit, And fashion it fit, Like a needle, with point and with eye: A point that can wound, An eye to look round, And at folly or vice let it fly.
Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy.
Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.
Democracy, to maintain itself, must repeatedly conquer every cell and corner of the nation. How many of our public institutions and private businesses, our schools, hospitals, and domestic hearths are in reality little fascist states where freedom of speech is more rigorously excluded than vermin?
Music, not being made up of objects nor referring to objects, is intangible and ineffable; it can only be as it were inhaled by the spirit: the rest is silence.
The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.
Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole.
Vanity is a static thing. It puts it faith in what it has, and is easily wounded. Pride is active, and satisfied only with what it can do, hence accustomed not to feel small stings.
It seems a long time since the morning mail could be called correspondence.
You never step in the same river of thought twice, because neither you nor it are the same.
Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.
Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.
The educated man had throughout the ages found a way to covert passionate activity into silent and motionless pleasure. He can sit still in a room and not perish.