Religion is not a matter of God, church, holy cause, etc. These are but accessories. The source of religious preoccupation read more

Religion is not a matter of God, church, holy cause, etc. These are but accessories. The source of religious preoccupation is in the self, or rather the rejection of the self. Dedication is the obverse side of self-rejection. Man alone is a religious animal because, as Montaigne points out, "it is a malady confined to man, and not seen in any other creature, to hate and despise ourselves.".

All rising to great place is by winding stair.

All rising to great place is by winding stair.

It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone- that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows read more

It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone- that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous...The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge.

The integrative tendencies of the individual operate through the mechanisms of empathy, sympathy, projection, introjection, identification, worship- all of which read more

The integrative tendencies of the individual operate through the mechanisms of empathy, sympathy, projection, introjection, identification, worship- all of which make him feel that he is a part of some larger entity which transcends the boundaries of the individual self. This psychological urge to belong, to participate, to commune is as primary and real as its opposite. The all-important question is the nature of that higher entity of which the individual feels himself a part.

Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which read more

Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within the existing scientific tradition.

Historical knowledge is indispensable for those who want to build a better world.

Historical knowledge is indispensable for those who want to build a better world.

There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it.

There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it.

Society is like air; very high up, it is sublimated--too low down, a perfect choke-damp.

Society is like air; very high up, it is sublimated--too low down, a perfect choke-damp.

Civilized man has always had a great inclination to read his conceptions and feelings into the mind of primitive man; read more

Civilized man has always had a great inclination to read his conceptions and feelings into the mind of primitive man; but he has only a limited capacity for understanding the latter's undeveloped mental life and for interpreting, as it were, his nature.