Any attempt to speak without speaking any particular language is not more hopeless than the attempt to have a religion that shall be no religion in particular.... Every living and healthy religion has a marked idiosyncrasy. Its power consists in its special and surprising message and the bias which that revelation gives to life.

Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They all may collapse altogether.

Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.

You cannot prove realism to a complete sceptic or idealist; but you can show an honest man that he is not a complete sceptic or idealist, but a realist at heart. So long as he is alive his sincere philosophy must fulfil the assumptions of his life and not destroy him.

Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.

In Greece wise men speak and fools decide.

There is nothing sacred about convention; there is nothing sacred about primitive passions or whims; but the fact that a convention exists indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of maintaining itself.