...the only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity to be found on the far side of complexity.

Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality.

In order to acquire learning, we must first shake ourselves free of it.

Without adventure all civilization is full of decay. Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China.

Peace is self-control at its widest-at the width where the "self" has been lost, and interest has been transferred to coordinations wider than personality.

In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows: for details are swallowed up in principles.

Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts. It is a way of illuminating the facts.