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

Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made by its parent. It may assent to them, but it brings them out in the open.

The preternatural solemnity of a good many of the professionally religious is to me a point against them.

Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved propositions about "any" things or about "some" things, without specifications of definite particular things.

That knowledge which adds greatness to character is knowledge so handled as to transform every phase of immediate experience.

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.

In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.