The world's greatest thinkers have often been amateurs; for high thinking is the outcome of fine and independent living, and read more

The world's greatest thinkers have often been amateurs; for high thinking is the outcome of fine and independent living, and for that a professional chair offers no special opportunities.

All weakness tends to corrupt, and impotence corrupts absolutely.

All weakness tends to corrupt, and impotence corrupts absolutely.

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of read more

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

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.

The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost two genera- a small minority that read more

The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost two genera- a small minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in, and a vast majority that finds them painful, and is thus arrayed against them, and against all who have traffic with them. The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority, and to the minority only. The majority has no more to do with it than it has to do with ecclesiastic politics on Mars. In so far as that heritage is apprehended, it is viewed with enmity. But in the main it is not apprehended at all.

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there. - The read more

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there. - The Tempation to Exist.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

The first step in freeing yourself from social restrictions is the realization that there is no such thing as a read more

The first step in freeing yourself from social restrictions is the realization that there is no such thing as a "safe" code of conduct - one that would earn everyone's approval. Your actions can always be condemned by someone - for being too bold or too apathetic, for being too conformist or too nonconformist, for being too liberal or too conservative. So it's necessary to decide whose approval is important to you.

We shall assume that what each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but by pictures made read more

We shall assume that what each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but by pictures made by himself or given to him. If his atlas tells him the world is flat he will not sail near what he believes to be the edge of our planet for fear of falling off. If his maps include a fountain of eternal youth, a Ponce de Leon will go off in quest of it. If someone digs up yellow dirt that looks like gold, he will for a time act exactly as if he has found gold. The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do. It does not determine what they will achieve. It determines their effort, their feelings, their hopes, not their accomplishments and results.