The 'silly question' is the first intimation of some totally novel development.

Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.

The learned tradition is not concerned with truth, but with the learned adjustment of learned statements of antecedent learned people.

[In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting.

Each human being is a more complex structure than any social system to which he belongs.

You think the world is what it looks like in fine weather at noon day; I think it is what it seems like in the early morning when one first wakes from deep sleep.

An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it.