Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. Thus religion is solitariness; and if you are never solitary, you are never religious.

Education should turn out the pupil with something he knows well and something he can do well.

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

By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.

The importance of an individual thinker owes something to chance. For it depends upon the fate of his ideas in the minds of his successors.

The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion. They can persuade and can be persuaded by the disclosure of alternatives, the better and the worse. Civilization is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however, unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals. Thus in a live civilization there is always an element of unrest.

Life is the enjoyment of emotion, derived from the past and aimed at the future.