With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway about the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Broadly speaking, we are in the middle of a race between human skill as a means and human folly as an end.

Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. … Aristotle, so far as I know, was the first man to proclaim explicitly that man is a rational animal. His reason for this view was … that some people can do sums. … It is in virtue of the intellect that man is a rational animal. The intellect is shown in various ways, but most emphatically by mastery of arithmetic. The Greek system of numerals was very bad, so that the multiplication table was quite difficult, and complicated calculations could only be made by very clever people.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

Artists are on the average less happy than men of science.

We may often do as we please - but we cannot please as we please.

Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.