Our beliefs are, however, often contrary to fact.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

All serious innovation is only rendered possible by some accident enabling unpopular persons to survive.

The opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.

Those whose lives are fruitful to themselves, to their friends, or to the world are inspired by hope and sustained by joy: they see in imagination the things that might be and the way in which they are to be brought into existence.

No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest.

None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error.