Men who love wisdom should acquaint themselves with a great many particulars.

Men who love wisdom should acquaint themselves with a great many particulars.

We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our essential ignorance.

We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our essential ignorance.

Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it.

Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it.

Children sweeten labours; but they make misfortunes more bitter. They increase the care of life; but they mitigate the remembrance read more

Children sweeten labours; but they make misfortunes more bitter. They increase the care of life; but they mitigate the remembrance of death. The perpetuity of generation is common to beasts; but memory, merit, and noble works, are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men; which have sought to express the images of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed.

The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, read more

The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, by the ignorant mass- which is easily swayed once its imagination is caught- but by professionals with a vested interest in tradition and in the monopoly of learning. Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse. The academic backwoodsmen have been the curse of genius from Aristarchus to Darwin and Freud; they stretch, a solid and hostile phalanx of pedantic mediocrities, across the centuries.

It is highly significant, and indeed almost a rule, that moral courage has its source in identification through one's own read more

It is highly significant, and indeed almost a rule, that moral courage has its source in identification through one's own sensitivity with the suffering of one's fellow human beings.

Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other.

Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other.

The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

Benevolence is a commitment to achieving the values derivable from life with other people in society, by treating them as read more

Benevolence is a commitment to achieving the values derivable from life with other people in society, by treating them as potential trading partners, recognizing their humanity, independence, and individuality, and the harmony between their interests and ours.