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The mentality of an army on the march is merely so much delayed adolescence; it remains persistently, incorrigibly and notoriously infantile.

Don't be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small steps.

If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture that you are a victim of it.

The seeds of great discoveries are constantly floating around, but they only take root in minds well prepared to receive them.

...it is curiosity, initiative, originality, and the ruthless application of honesty that count in research- much more than feats of logic and memory alone.

When scientific doctrines are mixed up with religious tenets, the same lifeless dogmatism will commonly benumb them both.

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.

The envious man thinks that if his neighbor breaks a leg, he will be able to walk better himself.

The more kindness shown to an envious man, the worse he becomes.

A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.

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.

Sin makes its own hell, and goodness its own heaven.

It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow.

The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful to truth must make himself perpetually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable renascent errors.

Ideals are very often formed in the effort to escape from the hard task of dealing with facts, which is the function of science and art. There is no process by which to reach an ideal. There are no tests by which to verify it. It is therefore impossible to frame a proposition about an ideal which can be proved or disproved. It follows that the use of ideals is to be strictly limited to proper cases, and that the attempt to use ideals in social discussion does not deserve serious consideration.

...ideas have a tendency to live lives of their own, and having become a part of tradition, they are very difficult to root out. When summarized in a few neat words or phrases, these gems of wisdom become substitutes for thought, and gradually take on much of the status of revealed truth. Occasionally, some iconoclast sees fit to challenge one of them, and a brief flurry ensues, after which things go on about as before. It is easy to think of plenty of ideas that are passing, if they have not already passed, beyond the stage of effective discussion.

The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

The ideas which now pass for brilliant innovations and advances are in fact mere revivals of ancient errors, and a further proof of the dictum that those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it.

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

A kiss to or from a woman we love is a far too delicate pledge of affection to bear the gaze of strangers.