[Tolstoy] discovered--and certainly never realized his discovery--he discovered a method of picturing life which most pleasingly a...nd exactly corresponds to our idea of time. He is the only writer I know of whose watch keeps time with numberless watches of his readers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The discovery of the North Pole is one of those realities which could not be avoided. It is the wages which human perseverance pay...s itself when it thinks that something is taking too long. The world needed a discoverer of the North Pole, and in all areas of social activity, merit was less important here than opportunity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of liberty. That is to s...ay, his training must be such as shall help him to diminish as much as possible the social bonds which limit his activity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To satisfy our doubts, therefore, it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be caused by nothing huma...n, but by some external permanency, by something upon which our thinking has no effect.... It must be something which affects, or might affect, every man. And though these affections are necessarily as various as are individual conditions, yet the method must be such that the ultimate conclusion of every man shall be the same, or would be the same if inquiry were persisted in. Such is the method of science.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One would wonder to hear skeptical men disputing for the reason of animals, and telling us it is only our pride and prejudices tha...t will not allow them the use of that faculty. Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation, or the continuance of his species. Animals in their generation are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass. Take a brute out of his instinct, and you find him wholly deprived of understanding.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Life seems to be an experience in ascending and descending. You think you're beginning to live for a single aim--for self-developm...ent, or the discovery of cosmic truths--when all you're really doing is to move from place to place as if devoted primarily to real estate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Reasoning is compared to understanding as movement is to rest, or acquisition to possession.... Since movement always proceeds fro...m something immovable, and ends in something at rest, hence it is that human reasoning, in the order of inquiry and discovery, proceeds from certain things absolutely understood--namely, the first principles; and, again, in the order of judgment, returns by analysis to first principles, in the light of which it examines what it has found. Now it is clear that rest and movement are not to be referred to different powers, but to one and the same.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »