Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.

Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.

The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

...the conviction persists - though history has shown it to be a hallucination - that all the questions that the read more

...the conviction persists - though history has shown it to be a hallucination - that all the questions that the human mind has asked are questions that can be answered in terms of the alternatives that the questions themselves present. But in fact intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together with both of the alternatives they assume - an abandonment that results from their decreasing vitality and change of urgent interest. We do not solve them: we get over them. Old questions are solved by disappearing, evaporating, while new questions corresponding to the changed attitude of endeavor and preference take their place.

When we find a thinker reflecting or echoing an apparently erroneous, narrow, or even illogical thought that was popular or read more

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.

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.

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.

The wise learn many things from their foes.

The wise learn many things from their foes.

The sexual regions constitute a particularly vulnerable spot, and remain so even in man, and the need for their protection read more

The sexual regions constitute a particularly vulnerable spot, and remain so even in man, and the need for their protection which thus exists conflicts with the prominent display required for sexual allurement. This end is far more effectively attained, with greater advantage and less disadvantage, by concentrating the chief ensigns of sexual attractiveness on the upper and more conspicuous parts of the body. This method is well-nigh universal among animals as well as in man.

There is no other way to judge the work of a mind except through its words.

There is no other way to judge the work of a mind except through its words.