Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.

Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity.

The whole of mathematics consists in the organization of a series of aids to the imagination in the process of reasoning.

No man of science wants merely to know. He acquires knowledge to appease his passion for discovery. He does not discover in order to know, he knows in order to discover.

The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.

Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science.

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure, a sense of nothing having been done before, of complete freedom to experiment.