One must be a little foolish if one does not want to be even more stupid.

How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!

It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it.

I will follow the right side even to the fire, but excluding the fire if I can.

Their pupils and their little charges are not nourished and fed by what they learn: the learning is passed from hand to hand with only one end in view: to show it off, to put into our accounts to entertain others with it, as though it were merely counters, useful for totting up and producing statements, but having no other use or currency. 'Apud alios loqui didicerunt, non ipsi secum' [They have learned how to talk with others, not with themselves]

This idea is more surely understood by interrogation; WHAT DO I KNOW? which I bear as my motto with the emblem of a pair of scales.

Diogenes was asked what wine he liked best; and he answered as I would have done when he said, "Somebody else's".