Authors are magpies, echoing each other's words and seizing avidly on anything that glitters.
Most civilized lives are measured out with coffee spoons.
We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.
We see what we want to see, and observation conforms to hypothesis.
The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical. . . . Any man who for one moment abandons or suspends the questioning spirit has for that moment betrayed humanity.
Wisdom is meaningless until your own experience has given it meaning, and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.