...man has an irrepressible tendency to read meaning into the buzzing confusion of sights and sounds impinging on his senses; read more

...man has an irrepressible tendency to read meaning into the buzzing confusion of sights and sounds impinging on his senses; and where no agreed meaning can be found, he will provide it out of his own imagination.

What the intellectual craves above all else is to be taken seriously, to be treated as a decisive force in read more

What the intellectual craves above all else is to be taken seriously, to be treated as a decisive force in shaping history. He is far more at home in a society that weighs his every word and keeps close watch on his attitudes then in a society that cares not what he says or does. He would rather be persecuted than ignored.

Only God helps the badly dressed.

Only God helps the badly dressed.

Cultures contain many cues and inducements to dissuade the individual from approaching ultimate limits, in much the same way that read more

Cultures contain many cues and inducements to dissuade the individual from approaching ultimate limits, in much the same way that a special warning strip of land around the edge of a baseball field lets a player know that he is about to run into a concrete wall when he is preoccupied with catching the ball. The wider that strip of land and the more sensitive the player is to the changing composition of the ground under his feet as he pursues the ball, the more effective the warning. Romanticizing or lionizing as "individualistic" those people who disregard social cues and inducements increases the danger of head-on collisions with inherent social limits. Decrying various forms of social disapproval is in effect narrowing the warning strip.

Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.

Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.

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.

Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.

Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.

Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely read more

Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.

Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error.

Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error.