When we find a thinker reflecting or echoing an apparently erroneous, narrow, or even illogical thought that was popular or authoritative in his time, we must never rule out the possibility that what we have discovered is not the limit of his vision but only an example of his deliberate rhetorical accommodation to reigning prejudice which he does not share but thinks it best not to expose.
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...the more original a discovery the more obvious it seems afterwards.
...the more original a discovery the more obvious it seems afterwards.
I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it read more
I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is. - Strong Opinions.
To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain enormously in confidence before read more
To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain enormously in confidence before he could conceive an all-powerful God who obeys his own laws.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it read more
Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion- in the long run, these are the only people who count.
It is nobler to convert souls, than to conquer kingdoms.
It is nobler to convert souls, than to conquer kingdoms.
Civilization is an enormous device for economizing knowledge,.
Civilization is an enormous device for economizing knowledge,.
The new frontiers to be conquered are mainly in the convolutions of the cortex.
The new frontiers to be conquered are mainly in the convolutions of the cortex.
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.
