Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language.

The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operations of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish. It is in a way the most civilised of all the cardinals, and its use is only forced on us by the needs of cultivated modes of thought.

The merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.

Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

It is not paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.

In the history of the world the prize has not gone to those species which specialized in methods of violence, or even in defensive armor. In fact, nature began with producing animals encased in hard shells for defense against the ill of life. But smaller animals, without external armor, warm-blooded, sensitive, alert, have cleared those monsters off the face of the earth.

Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. Thus religion is solitariness; and if you are never solitary, you are never religious.