If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you'll read more

If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you'll abort it if you do. Be patient and you'll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait.

Every fairly intelligent person is aware that the price of respectability is a muffled soul bent on the trivial and read more

Every fairly intelligent person is aware that the price of respectability is a muffled soul bent on the trivial and the mediocre.

Thought control, like birth control, is best undertaken as long as possible before the fact. Many grown-ups will obstinately persist, read more

Thought control, like birth control, is best undertaken as long as possible before the fact. Many grown-ups will obstinately persist, if only now and then, in composing small strings of sentences in their heads and achieving at least momentary logic. This probably cannot be prevented, but we have learned how to minimize the consequences by arranging that such grown-ups will be unable to pursue that logic very far. If they were at home in the technology of writing, there's no telling how much social disorder they would cause by thinking things out at length.Our schools have chosen to cut this danger off as close to the root as possible, thus taking measures to preclude not only the birth of thought but its conception. They give the pill to even the youngest children, but just to be on the safe side, they give it to everybody else, too, especially all would-be schoolteachers.

The readiness to praise others indicates a desire for excellence and perhaps an ability to realize it.

The readiness to praise others indicates a desire for excellence and perhaps an ability to realize it.

Who so regardeth dreams is like him that catcheth at a shadow, and followeth after the wind. [Ecclesiasti!4:2].

Who so regardeth dreams is like him that catcheth at a shadow, and followeth after the wind. [Ecclesiasti!4:2].

He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is read more

He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.

The history of science knows scores of instances where an investigator was in the possession of all the important facts read more

The history of science knows scores of instances where an investigator was in the possession of all the important facts for a new theory but simply failed to ask the right questions.

The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of order and regularity in things than it read more

The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of order and regularity in things than it really finds.

The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man read more

The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful to truth must make himself perpetually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable renascent errors.