 Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self. |
| The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order. |
| The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it. |
| The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy. |
| Religion is the last refuge of human savagery. |
| Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice. |
| Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas. |
| Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed. |
| Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge. |
| Seek simplicity but distrust it. |
| Without adventure civilization is in full decay. |
| Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it. |
| Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination. |
| I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether. |
| The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it. |
| Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced. |
| Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows. |
| Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains. |
| If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer. |
| Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them. |
