Triumphs against the natural order of living exact unforeseen payments. At the same time that man attempts to straighten a crooked nature, he is striving to annihilate space, which seems but another phase of the war against substance. We ignore the fact that space and matter are shock absorbers; the more we diminish them the more we reduce our privacy and security.

Life without prejudice, were it ever to be tried, would soon reveal itself to be a life without principle.

Our planet is falling victim to a rigorism, so that what is done in any remote corner affects - nay, menaces - the whole. Resiliency and tolerance are lost.

contempt for the degradation of specialization and pedantry. Specialization develops only part of a man; a man partially developed is deformed.

The issue ultimately involved is whether there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man; and the answer to the question is decisive for one’s view of the nature and destiny of man.

It is not that things give meaning to words; it is that meaning makes things "things." It does not make things in their subsistence; but it does make things in their discreteness for the understanding.

There are some despotic governments so filled with a feeling of insecurity that they regard the free life of culture as a threat to their existence. ... On the other extreme is the kind of popular government which is so distrustful of all forms of distinction that it sees even in the cultivated individual a menace to its existence. Such states are likely to maintain a pressure which discourages cultural endeavor, although the pressure may be exerted through social channels.