When asked to make the formal declaration that I did not intend to overthrow the Constitution of the United States, I was fool enough to reply that I had no such purpose, but that were I to do it by mistake I should be inexpressibly contrite.

Is the Scientific Paper a Fraud?

Psychoanalytic theory is the most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century and a terminal product as well-something akin to a dinosaur or zeppelin in the history of ideas, a vast structure of radically unsound design and with no posterity.

It can be said with complete confidence that any scientist of any age who wants to make important discoveries must study important problems. Dull or piffling problems yield dull or piffling answers. It is not enough that a problem should be "interesting".

Scientific reasoning is a dialogue between the possible and the actual, between proposal and disposal between what might be true, and what is in fact the case.

French is not a language that lends itself naturally to the opaque and ponderous idiom of nature-philosophy, and Teilhard has according resorted to the use of that tipsy, euphoristic prose-poetry which is one of the more tiresome manifestations of the French spirit.

To deride the hope of progress is the ultimate fatuity, the last word in poverty of spirit and meanness of mind.