It is not impossible to think that the minds of philosophers sometimes act like those of other mortals, and that, having once been determined by diverse circumstances to adopt certain views, they then look for and naturally find reasons to justify these views.

The picture which the philosopher draws of the world is surely not one in which every stroke is necessitated by pure logic.

If a philosophic theory is once ruled out of court, no one can tell when it will appear again.

Liberalism regards life as an adventure in which we must take risks in new situation, in which there is no guarantee that the new will always be the good or the true, in which progress is a precarious achievement rather than inevitability.

The business of the philosopher is well done if he succeeds in raising genuine doubt.

A creative element is surely present in all great systems, and it does not seem possible that all sympathy or fundamental attitudes of will can be entirely eliminated from any human philosophy.

Inertia is the first law of history, as it is of physics.