Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.

The fruit of the tree of knowledge always drives man from some paradise or other; and even the paradise of fools is not an unpleasant abode while it is habitable.

I think middle-age is the best time, if we can escape the fatty degeneration of the conscience which often sets in at about fifty.

Philosophy means thinking things out for oneself. Ultimately, there can be only one true philosophy, since reason is one and we all live in the same world.

It is quite natural and inevitable that, if we spend sixteen hours daily of our waking lives in thinking about the affairs of the world and five minutes in thinking about God and our souls, this world will seem two hundred times more real to us than God.

Faith always contains an element of risk, of venture; and we are impelled to make the venture by the affinity and attraction which we feel in ourselves.

The whole of nature, as has been said, is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and in the passive.