Men need some kind of external activity, because they are inactive within.

The man who goes up in a balloon does not feel as if he were ascending; he only sees the earth sinking deeper below him.

There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted.

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

When a new truth enters the world, the first stage of reaction to it is ridicule, the second stage is violent opposition, and in the third stage, that truth comes to be regarded as self-evident.