The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, read more

The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, by the ignorant mass- which is easily swayed once its imagination is caught- but by professionals with a vested interest in tradition and in the monopoly of learning. Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse. The academic backwoodsmen have been the curse of genius from Aristarchus to Darwin and Freud; they stretch, a solid and hostile phalanx of pedantic mediocrities, across the centuries.

It is only doubt that creates. It is only the minority that counts.

It is only doubt that creates. It is only the minority that counts.

The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned read more

The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them or else leave the door open to self-contempt.

Men never do evil so fully and so happily as when they do it for conscience's sake.

Men never do evil so fully and so happily as when they do it for conscience's sake.

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his read more

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

He who can take no interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great.

He who can take no interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great.

You want to hear about insanity? I was found running naked through the jungles in Mexico. At the Mexico City read more

You want to hear about insanity? I was found running naked through the jungles in Mexico. At the Mexico City airport, I decided I was in the middle of a movie and walked out on the wing on takeoff. My body... my liver... okay, my brain... went.

That hatred springs more from self-contempt than from a legitimate grievance is seen in the intimate connection between hatred and read more

That hatred springs more from self-contempt than from a legitimate grievance is seen in the intimate connection between hatred and a guilty conscience.

In the world of reality, life, and human action there is no such thing as interests independent of ideas, preceding read more

In the world of reality, life, and human action there is no such thing as interests independent of ideas, preceding them temporarily and logically. What a man considers his interest is the result of his ideas.