"Common sense is genius in homespun."

"Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe."

"There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil."

"Simple solutions seldom are. It takes a very unusual mind to undertake analysis of the obvious."

"In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory."

"The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature."

"Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them."

"Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning."

"Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself."

"Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language."

"Without adventure civilization is in full decay."

"Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas."

"I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't."

"The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen; times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals."

"Seek simplicity but distrust it."

"Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended."

"It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious."

"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."

"What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike."

"The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy."

"Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure."

"It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious."

"Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it."

"True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason."

"The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue."

"But you can catch yourself entertaining habitually certain ideas and setting others aside; and that, I think, is where our personal destinies are largely decided."

"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."

"No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude."

"Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice."

"Religion is the last refuge of human savagery."

"The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order."

"Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge."

"It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties."

"Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude."

"The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development."

"Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains."

"Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language."

"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."

"Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced."

"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."

"I would be a billionaire if I was looking to be a selfish boss. That's not me."

"Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern."

"Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self."

"The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it."

"Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination."

"Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious."

"Philosophy is the product of wonder."

"Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows."

"Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up."

"We think in generalities, but we live in detail."