Reason's biological function is to preserve and promote life and to postpone its extinction as long as possible. Thinking and acting are not contrary to nature; they are, rather, the foremost features of man's nature. The most appropriate description of man as differentiated from nonhuman beings is: a being purposively struggling against the forces adverse to his life.
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Passion holds up the botton of the world, while genius paints its roof.
Passion holds up the botton of the world, while genius paints its roof.
A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.
A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.
What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.
What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.
Nature attains perfection, but man never does. There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished. read more
Nature attains perfection, but man never does. There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished. He is both an unfinished animal and an unfinished man. It is this incurable unfinishedness which sets man apart from other living things. For, in the attempt to finish himself, man becomes a creator. Moreover, the incurable unfinishedness keeps man perpetually immature, perpetually capable of learning and growing.
Action based on reason, action therefore which is only to be understood by reason, knows only one end, the greatest read more
Action based on reason, action therefore which is only to be understood by reason, knows only one end, the greatest pleasure of the acting individual.
Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a read more
Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer.
...the conviction persists - though history has shown it to be a hallucination - that all the questions that the read more
...the conviction persists - though history has shown it to be a hallucination - that all the questions that the human mind has asked are questions that can be answered in terms of the alternatives that the questions themselves present. But in fact intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together with both of the alternatives they assume - an abandonment that results from their decreasing vitality and change of urgent interest. We do not solve them: we get over them. Old questions are solved by disappearing, evaporating, while new questions corresponding to the changed attitude of endeavor and preference take their place.
All prayers and hopes are a reaching-out for coincidences.
All prayers and hopes are a reaching-out for coincidences.
If your dream is a big dream, and if you want your life to work on the high level that read more
If your dream is a big dream, and if you want your life to work on the high level that you say you do, there's no way around doing the work it takes to get you there.
