In every chain of reasoning, the evidence of the last conclusion can be no greater than that of the weakest link of the chain, whatever may be the strength of the rest.

For the perception of the beautiful we have the term "taste"--a metaphor taken from that which is passive in the body and transferred to that which is active in the mind.

Every theory in philosophy, which is built on pure conjecture, is an elephant; and every theory that is supported partly by fact, and partly by conjecture, is like Nebuchadnezzar's image, whose feet were partly of iron, and partly of clay.

I sit in my loft with the haves and look out at the have-nots - the bottom of the bottom - and I have to rationalize it, ... Am I pushing out the homeless?

Every conjecture we can form with regard to the works of God has as little probability as the conjectures of a child with regard to the works of an adult.

It is the invaluable merit of the great Basle mathematician Leonard Euler, to have freed the analytical calculus from all geometric bounds, and thus to have established analysis as an independent science, which from his time on has maintained an unchallenged leadership in the field of mathematics.

It appears evident, therefore, that those actions only can truly be called virtuous, and deserving of moral approbation, which the agent believed to be right, and to which he was influenced, more or less, by that belief.