New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

The more adaptability exists for a given kind of decision, the less risky it is to make plans for the read more

The more adaptability exists for a given kind of decision, the less risky it is to make plans for the future, and therefore the more likely it is that more people will make more plans in such areas.

Any act often repeated soon forms a habit; and habit allowed, steady gains in strength, At first it may be read more

Any act often repeated soon forms a habit; and habit allowed, steady gains in strength, At first it may be but as a spider's web, easily broken through, but if not resisted it soon binds us with chains of steel.

Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness read more

Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.

We cannot but be astonished at the ease with which men resign themselves to ignorance about what is most important read more

We cannot but be astonished at the ease with which men resign themselves to ignorance about what is most important for them to know; and we may be certain that they are determined to remain invincibly ignorant if they once come to consider it as axiomatic that there are no absolute principles.

Evaluation and judgment are responses to what exists, sorting the things that pass before us into categories of good, bad, read more

Evaluation and judgment are responses to what exists, sorting the things that pass before us into categories of good, bad, and indifferent. But a rational life, the life of a valuer, does not consist essentially in reaction. It consists in action. Man does not find his values, like the other animals; he creates them. The primary focus of a valuer is not to take the world as it comes and pass judgment. His primary focus is to identify what might and ought to exist, to uncover potentialities that he can exploit, to find ways of reshaping the world in the image of his values.

The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.

The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.

Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era read more

Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era of events. The new barbarism of the twentieth century is the echo of words bandied about by brilliant speakers and writers in the second half of the nineteenth.

We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.

We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.