There is no more dangerous error than that of mistaking the consequence for the cause.

The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world.

Do you believe then that the sciences would ever have arisen and become great if there had not before hand been magicians, alchemists, astrologers and wizards, who thirsted and hungered after abscondite and forbidden powers?

Higher than "thou shalt" stands "I will" (the heroes), and higher than "I will" stands "I am" (the Greek gods).

Too long, the earth has been a madhouse!

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

Partial knowledge is more triumphant than complete knowledge; it takes things to be simpler than they are, and so makes its theory more popular and convincing.