It seems that when we are oppressed by the knowledge of our worthlessness we do not see ourselves as lower read more

It seems that when we are oppressed by the knowledge of our worthlessness we do not see ourselves as lower than some and higher than others, but as lower than the lowest of mankind. We hate then the whole world, and we would pour our wrath upon the whole of creation.

The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.

The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.

From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.

From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.

Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.

Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a read more

Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer.

When you say that you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention read more

When you say that you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.

A man is never more his single separate self than when he sets out on a journey.

A man is never more his single separate self than when he sets out on a journey.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of read more

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.