The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

Formality Thus the absence of all mention of particular things or properties in logic or pure mathematics is a necessary result of the fact that this study is, as we say, "purely formal".

The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions is this: Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.

To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.

The triumph of science has been mainly due to its practical utility, and there has been an attempt to divorce this aspect from that of theory, thus making science more and more a technique, and less and less a doctrine as to the nature of the world. The penetration of this point of view to philosophers is very recent.

What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.