And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are read more

And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.

It is not at all simple to understand the simple.

It is not at all simple to understand the simple.

Wherever we find orderly, stable systems in Nature, we find that they are hierarchically structured, for the simple reason that read more

Wherever we find orderly, stable systems in Nature, we find that they are hierarchically structured, for the simple reason that without such structuring of complex systems into sub-assemblies, there could be no order and stability- except the order of a dead universe filled with a uniformly distributed gas.

Scientific research sooner or later, but inevitably, encounters something ultimately given that it cannot trace back to something else of read more

Scientific research sooner or later, but inevitably, encounters something ultimately given that it cannot trace back to something else of which it would appear as the regular or necessary derivative. Scientific progress consists in pushing further back this ultimately given.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes read more

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.This minding of other people's business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat.

Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the read more

Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.

The biggest mischief in the past century has been perpetrated by Rousseau with his doctrine of the goodness of human read more

The biggest mischief in the past century has been perpetrated by Rousseau with his doctrine of the goodness of human nature. The mob and the intellectuals derived from it the vision of a Golden Age which would arrive without fail once the noble human race could act according to its whims.

If there is no struggle there is no progress.

If there is no struggle there is no progress.