To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.

No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality.

To be an abstraction does not mean that an entity is nothing. It merely means that its existence is only a factor of a more concrete element of nature.

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.

Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality.

For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with. It must be either new in itself or invested with some novelty of application to the new world of new times. Knowledge does not keep any better than fish. You may be dealing with knowledge of the old species, with some old truth; but somehow it must come to the students, as it were, just drawn out of the sea and with the freshness of its immediate importance.