Only great minds can afford a simple style.

Only great minds can afford a simple style.

Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.

Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth--that the read more

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth--that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.

The human race has had long experience and a fine tradition in surviving adversity. But we now face a task read more

The human race has had long experience and a fine tradition in surviving adversity. But we now face a task for which we have little experience, the task of surviving prosperity.

You cannot criticize the New Testament. It criticizes you.

You cannot criticize the New Testament. It criticizes you.

People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because read more

People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.

A people is but the attempt of many
To rise to the completer life of one--
And read more

A people is but the attempt of many
To rise to the completer life of one--
And those who live as models for the mass
Are singly of more value than they all.

The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.

The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.

I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and read more

I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as the facts are shown to be opposed to it.