The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but an habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its opposite halves - sometimes split into quarters - which grind on each other. Not only individuals but states have thus a confirmed dyspepsia.

Ex oriente lux may still be the motto of scholars, for the Western world has not yet derived from the East all the light which itis destined to receive thence.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.

Give me a country where it is the most natural thing in the world for a government that does not understand you to let you alone.

The heroes and discoverers have found true more than was previously believed, only when they were expecting and dreaming of something more than their contemporaries dreamed of, or even themselves discovered, that is, when they were in a frame of mind fitted to behold the truth. Referred to the world's standard, they are always insane. Even savages have indirectly surmised as much.