The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and read more

The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.

A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.

A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.

We have no assurance that half-truth will make us free.

We have no assurance that half-truth will make us free.

Every man is as Heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.

Every man is as Heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.

Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it.

Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it.

Society cannot contribute anything to the breeding and growing of ingenious men. A creative genius cannot be trained. There are read more

Society cannot contribute anything to the breeding and growing of ingenious men. A creative genius cannot be trained. There are no schools for creativeness. A genius is precisely a man who defies all schools and rules, who deviates from the traditional roads of routine and opens up new paths through land inaccessible before. A genius is always a teacher, never a pupil; he is always self-made.

The world's greatest thinkers have often been amateurs; for high thinking is the outcome of fine and independent living, and read more

The world's greatest thinkers have often been amateurs; for high thinking is the outcome of fine and independent living, and for that a professional chair offers no special opportunities.

The craving to change the world is perhaps a reflection of the craving to change ourselves.

The craving to change the world is perhaps a reflection of the craving to change ourselves.

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.