The a priori method is distinguished for its comfortable conclusions. It is the nature of the process to adopt whatever belief weare inclined to, and there are certain flatteries to the vanity of man which we all believe by nature, until we are awakened from our pleasing dream by rough facts.

All the progress we have made in philosophy ... is the result of that methodical skepticism which is the element of human freedom.

The one [the logician] studies the science of drawing conclusions, the other [the mathematician] the science which draws necessary conclusions.

A quality is something capable of being completely embodied. A law never can be embodied in its character as a law except by determining a habit. A quality is how something may or might have been. A law is how an endless future must continue to be.

And what, then, is belief? It is the demi-cadence which closes a musical phrase in the symphony of our intellectual life.

There is a kink in my damned brain that prevents me from thinking as other people think.

We do not really think, we are barely conscious, until something goes wrong.