To gauge the understanding and insight that metaphysics provides is to ask whether, in the final analysis, it helps us read more

To gauge the understanding and insight that metaphysics provides is to ask whether, in the final analysis, it helps us to cope with our world and harmonize our existence with nature, humanity, and ourselves, and leads to greater freedom and self-realization. Metaphysics is only the beginning. The end is human progress.

Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than a desire to bestow upon the world something read more

Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than a desire to bestow upon the world something we already have. It is a search for a final and irrefutable demonstration that our absolute truth is indeed the one and only truth. The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others.

And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are read more

And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.

The present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future.

The present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future.

All of us necessarily hold many casual opinions that are ludicrously wrong simply because life is far too short for read more

All of us necessarily hold many casual opinions that are ludicrously wrong simply because life is far too short for us to think through even a small fraction of the topics that we come across.

There arises from a bad and inapt formation of words, a wonderful obstruction to the mind.

There arises from a bad and inapt formation of words, a wonderful obstruction to the mind.

Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience.

Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience.

The thoughts of Plato and Machiavelli... don't seem quite enough armor for a world beset with splitting the atoms, urban read more

The thoughts of Plato and Machiavelli... don't seem quite enough armor for a world beset with splitting the atoms, urban guerrillas, nineteen varieties of psychotherapists, amplified guitars, napalm, computers, astronauts, and an atmosphere polluted simultaneously with auto exhaust and TV commercials.

Facts do not "speak for themselves." They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are read more

Facts do not "speak for themselves." They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.