What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.

In a living civilization there is always an element of unrest, for sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilized order survives on its merits and is transformed by its power of recognizing its imperfections.

The aims of scientific thought are to see the general in the particular and the eternal in the transitory.

I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't.

Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise

How the past perishes is how the future becomes.

I consider Christian theology to be one of the great disasters of the human race.