Philosophy begins in wonder. And at the end when philosophic thought has done its best the wonder remains.
In the conditions of modern life the rule is absolute, the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed.
The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.
A student should not be taught more than he can think about.
Get your knowledge quickly and then use it. If you can use it you will retain it.
Science is a river with two sources, the practical source and the theoretical source.
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.
Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality.Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing. The limitation, and the basis arising from what is already actual, are both of them necessary and interconnected.
Religion is what an individual does with his solitariness.
We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detail in addition to thinking of it in generalities.
Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling.
The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.
The “silly” question is the first intimation of some totally new development
From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
A civilized society is one that exhibits the five qualities of truth beauty adventure art and peace.
Not a sentence or a word is independent of the circumstances under which it is uttered.
True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
God is in the world or nowhere creating continually in us and around us. Insofar as man partakes of this creative process does he partake of the divine of God and that participation is his immortality ….
The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism founded upon appreciation of beauty and of intellectual distinction and of duty.
Education with inert ideas is not only useless it is above all things harmful.
The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not liberal and no liberal education which is not technical.
Every organism requires an environment of friends partly to shield it from violent changes and partly to supply it with its wants.
The total absence of humour from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.
Ideas won’t keep: something must be done about them.
Not ignorance but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge.
Fools act on imagination without knowledge pedants act on knowledge without imagination.
Some of the finest moral intuitions come to quite humble people. The visiting of lofty ideas doesn’t depend on formal schooling. Think of those Galilean peasants.
Life is an offensive directed against the repetitious mechanism of the universe.
What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.
It takes a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
The only justification in the use of force is to reduce the amount of force necessary to be used.
The major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur.
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.
Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.
The total absence of humour in the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.
The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.
The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground for it is the past and it is the future.
There are no whole truths. All truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
Routine is the god of every social system it is the seventh heaven of business the essential component in the success of every factory the ideal of every statesman.
A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied he is content.
The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
It is the business of the future to be dangerous and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.
The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.
Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.
No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.
No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.
In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.
If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.
Wisdom alone is true ambition’s aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.
The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue.