All the world is birthday cake, 

so take a piece, 

but not too much.

We soon believe the things we would believe.

We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people's lives.

Ideas are one thing and what happens is another.

Today and always, 

there will be an obligation 

to pass on to the new generation 

the tradition of liberal scholarship 

– scientific or in the humanities – 

and to bring the understanding 

of things and human actions 

to everyone.

If intelligence is the triumph of life, 

the spoken word is the marvellous means by which 

this intelligence is manifested.

To love our neighbour as ourselves 

is such a truth for regulating human society, 

that by that alone 

one might determine all the cases in social morality.

Everything in writing begins with language. 

Language begins with listening.

Languages are true analytical methods.

Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.

Music is the arithmetic of sounds 

as optics is the geometry of light.

What a man does for pay is of little significance. 

What he is, 

as a sensitive instrument 

responsive to the world's beauty, 

is everything!

We first make our habits, 

and then our habits make us.

In science, 

the credit goes 

to the man who convinces the world, 

not to whom the idea first occurs.

The disappearance of a sense of responsibility 

is the most far-reaching consequence 

of submission to authority.

The world is given to me only once, 

not one existing and one perceived. 

Subject and object are only one. 

The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down 

as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, 

for this barrier does not exist.

You don't understand anything until 

you learn it more than one way.

The sciences are being held back 

by assumptions that have hardened into dogmas, 

maintained by powerful taboos. 

I believe that the sciences will be regenerated 

when they are set free.

Ring out the false, 

ring in the true.

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, 

and makes familiar objects be 

as if they were not familiar.

Truth 

uncompromisingly told 

will always have its ragged edges.

I have dreamed in my life, 

dreams that have stayed with me ever after, 

and changed my ideas; 

they have gone through and through me, 

like wine through water, 

and altered the colour of my mind.

Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect 

but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. 

The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

Only a man who has felt ultimate despair 

is capable of feeling ultimate bliss.

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? 

It is the greatest of all possible evils; 

for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

Nothing is too wonderful to be true, 

if it be consistent with the laws of nature.

Freedom is something that dies unless it's used.

Few have been taught to any purpose 

who have not been their own teachers.

An artist is not paid for his labour 

but for his vision.

Rather than love, 

than money, 

than fame, 

give me truth.

Unlike scientism, 

science in the true sense of the word 

is open to unbiased investigation 

of any existing phenomena.

Your brain develops depending on your individual history. 

What has gone on in your own brain and its consciousness 

over your lifetime 

is not repeatable, 

ever 

— not with identical twins, 

not even with conjoined twins.

The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.

Perhaps in time 

the so-called Dark Ages 

will be thought of 

as including our own.

I maintain also that substances, 

whether material or immaterial, 

cannot be conceived in their bare essence without any activity, 

activity being of the essence of substance in general.

Tell me and I forget. 

Show me and I remember. 

Involve me and I understand.

I may be no better, 

but at least I am different.

Science is bound, 

by the everlasting vow of honour, 

to face fearlessly every problem 

which can be fairly presented to it.

Doubt is the father of invention.

From bitter searching of the heart,

Quickened with passion and with pain

We rise to play a greater part.

This is the faith from which we start:

Men shall know commonwealth again

From bitter searching of the heart.

We loved the easy and the smart,

But now, with keener hand and brain,

We rise to play a greater part.

The lesser loyalties depart,

And neither race nor creed remain

From bitter searching of the heart.

Not steering by the venal chart

That tricked the mass for private gain,

We rise to play a greater part.

Reshaping narrow law and art

Whose symbols are the millions slain,

From bitter searching of the heart

We rise to play a greater part.

We view things
not only from different sides, 

but with different eyes; 

we have no wish to find them alike.

Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, 

while in fact language remains the master of man.

Human it is to have compassion on the unhappy.

The past, the present and the future are really one: 

they are today.

Words easy to be understood do often hit the mark; 

when high and learned ones do only pierce the air.

Our brain is mapping the world. 

Often that map is distorted, 

but it's a map with constant immediate sensory input.

An idea is salvation by imagination.

For the myth is the foundation of life; 

it is the timeless schema, 

the pious formula into which life flows 

when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious.

There never was any heart truly great and generous, 

that was not also tender and compassionate.