If anything were FULLY explained, everything would be explained.

If anything were FULLY explained, everything would be explained.

The acquiring of culture is the development of an avid hunger for knowledge and beauty.

The acquiring of culture is the development of an avid hunger for knowledge and beauty.

The only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it.

The only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it.

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, read more

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called, ''Keep tomorrow dark,'' and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) ''Cheat the Prophet.'' The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.

The philosophy called individualism is a philosophy of social cooperation and the progressive intensification of the social nexus.

The philosophy called individualism is a philosophy of social cooperation and the progressive intensification of the social nexus.

The theory of evolution must be considered as a scientific theory, as theory, that is, proposed to explain or systemize read more

The theory of evolution must be considered as a scientific theory, as theory, that is, proposed to explain or systemize a set of facts, and that no one has any claim to be considered as a serious rival to Darwin in the "discovery" of this theory who did not conduct his evolutionary studies upon a reasonably wide basis of facts. To have ideas, apercus, is not enough, and it is the overevalutation of such clever but uncontrolled guesses which is apt to produce the ludicrous fallacy of combination, in which fragments of the final theory are collected from widely scattered sources and are combined in such a way as to impugn the originality of him who was the first to see how such a synthesis was possible.

The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness or read more

The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness or holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold onto.

When we find ourselves wondering about the meaning of conditions and events, its always useful to ask, who profits?

When we find ourselves wondering about the meaning of conditions and events, its always useful to ask, who profits?

Some tribes [of monkeys] have taken to washing potatoes in the river before eating them, others have not. Sometimes migrating read more

Some tribes [of monkeys] have taken to washing potatoes in the river before eating them, others have not. Sometimes migrating groups of potato-washers meet non-washers, and the two groups watch each other's strange behavior with apparent bewilderment. But unlike the inhabitants of Lilliput, who fought holy crusades over the question at which end to break the egg, the potato-washing monkeys do not go to war with the non-washers, because the poor creatures have no language which would enable them to declare washing a diving commandment and eating unwashed potatoes a deadly heresy.