That it does not matter what a man believes is a statement heard on every side today. ... What he believes tells him what the world is for. How can men who disagree about what the world is for agree about any of the minutiae of daily conduct? The statement really means that it does not matter what a man believes so long as he does not take his beliefs seriously.

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

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.

To one completely committed to this realm of becoming, as are the empiricists, the claim to apprehend verities is a sign of psychopathology. Probably we have here but a highly sophisticated expression of the doctrine that ideals are hallucination and that the only normal, sane person is the healthy extrovert, making instant, instinctive adjustments to the stimuli of the material world.

Respecters of private property are really obligated to oppose much that is done today in the name of private enterprise, for corporate organization and monopoly are the very means whereby property is casting aside its privacy.

In the countries of Europe, one after another, the gentleman has been ousted by politicians and entrepreneurs, as materialism has given rewards to the sort of cunning incompatible with any kind of idealism.

Hysterical optimism will prevail until the world again admits the existence of tragedy, and it cannot admit the existence of tragedy until it again distinguishes between good and evil. . . Hysterical optimism as a sin against knowledge.