It is a waste of time to dissipate one's moral zeal in disapproving of royal persons who have mistresses.

There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.

But as a skeptic I am dubious about science as about everything else, unless the scientist is himself a skeptic, and few of them are. The stench of formaldehyde may be as potent as the whiff of incense in stimulating a naturally idolatrous understanding.

All mothers think their children are oaks, but the world never lacks for cabbages.

To instruct calls for energy, and to remain almost silent, but watchful and helpful, while students instruct themselves, calls for even greater energy. To see someone fall (which will teach him not to fall again) when a word from you would keep him on his feet but ignorant of an important danger, is one of the tasks of the teacher that calls for special energy, because holding in is more demanding than crying out.

If you attack Stupidity you attack an entrenched interest with friends in government and every walk of public life.

It is those pent-up, craving children who make all the wars and all the horrors and all the art and all the beauty and discovery in life, because they are trying to achieve what lay beyond their grasp before they were five years old.