Though under-instruction is a bad thing, it is not impossible that over-instruction may be worse.

Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing?

Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best.

Some experience of popular lecturing had convinced me that the necessity of making things plain to uninstructed people, was one of the very best means of clearing up the obscure corners in one's own mind.

A well-worn adage advises those who set out upon a great enterprise to count the cost, yet some of the greatest enterprises have succeeded because the people who undertook them did not count the cost.

The only people, scientific or other, who never make mistakes are those who do nothing.

The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.