When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.

When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.

A line runs from the meditations of the heart to the words of the mouth. The meditations are not clear read more

A line runs from the meditations of the heart to the words of the mouth. The meditations are not clear to us until the mouth utters its words. If what the mouth utters is unclear or foolish or mendacious, it must be that the meditations are the same. But the line runs both ways. The words of the mouth will become the meditations of the heart, and the habit of loose talk loosens the fastenings of our understanding.

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.

To illustrate the difference between the innovator and the dull crowd of routinists who cannot even imagine that any improvement read more

To illustrate the difference between the innovator and the dull crowd of routinists who cannot even imagine that any improvement is possible, we need only refer to a passage in Engel's most famous book. Here, in 1878, Engels apodictically announced that military weapons are "now so perfected that no further progress of any revolutionizing influence is any longer possible." Henceforth "all further [technological] progress is by and large indifferent for land warfare. The age of evolution is in this regard essentially closed." This complacent conclusion shows in what the achievement of the innovator consists: he accomplishes what other people believe to be unthinkable and unfeasible.

Collective judgement of new ideas is so often wrong that it is arguable that progress depends on individuals being free read more

Collective judgement of new ideas is so often wrong that it is arguable that progress depends on individuals being free to back their own judgement despite collective disapproval.

...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.

Veracity is the heart of morality.

Veracity is the heart of morality.

The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning read more

The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.The remarkable thing is that the cessation of the inner dialogue marks also the end of our concern with the world around us. It is as if we noted the world and think about it only when we have to report it to ourselves.

Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in laughter hints read more

Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in laughter hints at its savage ancestry. Animals have no malice, hence also no laughter. They never savor the sudden glory of Schadenfreude. It was its infectious quality that made of laughter a medium of mutuality.