Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.

If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.

The hardest part of gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche.

The hardest part of gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche.

Science does not give us absolute and final certainty. It only gives us assurance within the limits of our mental read more

Science does not give us absolute and final certainty. It only gives us assurance within the limits of our mental abilities and the prevailing state of scientific thought.

The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost two genera- a small minority that read more

The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost two genera- a small minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in, and a vast majority that finds them painful, and is thus arrayed against them, and against all who have traffic with them. The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority, and to the minority only. The majority has no more to do with it than it has to do with ecclesiastic politics on Mars. In so far as that heritage is apprehended, it is viewed with enmity. But in the main it is not apprehended at all.

Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as read more

Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew. They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming. But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking.

When an elephant is in trouble even a frog will kick him.

When an elephant is in trouble even a frog will kick him.