Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember. - Aenid.

Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember. - Aenid.

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of read more

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

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.

Of all sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.

Of all sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.

There is only one step from fanaticism to barbarism.

There is only one step from fanaticism to barbarism.

Every man is as Heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.

Every man is as Heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.

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.

Knowledge can be enormously costly, and is often scattered in widely uneven fragments, too small to be individually usable in read more

Knowledge can be enormously costly, and is often scattered in widely uneven fragments, too small to be individually usable in decision making. The communication and coordination of these scattered fragments of knowledge is one of the basic problems- perhaps the basic problem- of any society.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.