A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others,thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.

Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about the past are a form of injustice.

It is always some illusion that creates disillusion, especially in the young, for whom the only alternative to perfection is cynicism.

Above all, do not talk yourself out of good ideas by trying to expound them at haphazard meetings.

An artist has every right - one may even say a duty - to exhibit his productions as prominently as he can.

The ascetic is often a sensualist who has reached the limit of his capacity.

Since in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding the conquest of power and a racialist party demanding internal purges against aliens - all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to say science incarnate.