It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own?

What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism.

Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front--

Man is at his tallest when he bows.

In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn.

To mix science up with philosophy is only to produce a philosophy that has lost all its ideal value and a science that has lost all its practical value. It is for my private physician to tell me whether this or that food will kill me. It is for my private philosopher to tell me whether I ought to be killed.