Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!

We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

A man of genius is not a man who sees more than other men do. On the contrary, it is very often found that he is absentminded andobserves much less than other people.... Why is it that the public have such an exaggerated respect for him--after he is dead? The reason is that the man of genius understands the importance of the few things he sees.

No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.

Civilization is a disease produced by the practice of building societies with rotten material.

In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat, for which they had at least the evidence of their senses: we believe it to be round, not because as many as 1 percent of us could give physical reasons for so quaint a belief, but because modern science has convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that is magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic, microscopic, heartless, or outrageous is scientific.