To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.

Ideal society is a drama enacted exclusively in the imagination.

Even under the most favorable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its center.

The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw. Memory itself is an internal rumour.

Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.

The works of nature first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke.

The family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational. If the race had developed a special sexless class to be nurses, pedagogues, and slaves, like the workers among ants and bees, then the family would have been unnecessary. Such a division of labor would doubtless have involved evils of its own, but it would have obviated some drags and vexations proper to the family.