Talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a commonplace dauber, so I... don't intend to try any more.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When the situation is, what we would wish, nothing is so ill- timed as to hint at the circumstances which make it so: you thank Fo...rtune ... you had reason--the heart knew it, and was satisfied; and who but an English philosopher would have sent notices of it to the brain to reverse the judgment?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One thing I am determined on is that by the time I die my brain shall weigh as much as a man's if study and learning can make it s...o.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No one should be surprised that Western philosophy began in symposia, drinking parties, nor that the philosophy with such roots ha...s always had as its central assumption the existence of an objective universe to which individual speculations must conform. The whole West, divided on everything else, unites to shout the great axiom, that thinking does not make it so. This is not an axiom congenial to marijuana. The pot-smoker re ceives his "insights" by peering into himself, not by fixing his attention on the world, and he regards his inspirations as private truths. He rejects any notion of objective verification. Generously, he will allow other persons to have other truths, all these private revelations being not so much contradictory as incommensurable. No wonder there is such hot warfare between the followers of Bacchus and the worshippers of the hempen gods of the East. The subject of their quarrel is only the universe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our policy is to give all possible material aid to the nations that still resist aggression across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.... And we make it abundantly clear that we intend to commit none of the fatal errors of appeasement. We have the thought that in this nation of many states we have found the way in which men of many racial origins may live together in peace. If the human race as a whole is to survive, the world must find a way by which men and nations may live together in peace. We cannot accept the doctrine that war must be forever a part of man's destiny.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, How much do you owe my master?' He answered, A hundred jugs o...f olive oil.' He said to him, Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[On Harvard President Charles William Eliot's lamentation that the average Harvard graduate had fewer than two children:] That is ...quite enough. Harvard graduates do not always make the best fathers. Why should we be agitated over the too small families of the rich when there are so many children of the poor that are not cared for? The rich should make it their duty to raise up these children to a higher standard.... Men of the world hate to give up their tobacco, liquor, sports, clubs, their luxurious habits, their freedom from responsibility. They prefer to flock together and so women are compelled to do the same. President Eliot talks as though the young women were sitting around anxiously and aimlessly waiting for the graduates to come and get them. He would find, if he should make the proper investigation, that a class of women is being developed who are demanding a higher standard of morals in men than did those of past generations, and if they cannot get husbands who reach this standard they are making very satisfactory careers for themselves outside of marriage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you have ever watched an artist constructing with bits of cold stone a beautiful living picture you know that he works faithful...ly and carefully on the pattern from the wrong side and while he is working every inequality, every tint a little too dull is apparent to him as his picture grows, but he works on and on. And even when he finishes at last and looks down at the completed pattern he is not discouraged to see here a little crevice and there a little roughness, an open seam here, a tiny patch there where the bit of marble was too small. Now he pours his cement over it and smoothes [sic] it into every seam, and with faith puts his work to dry. Next day the pattern is turned and the perfect whole is given to view, needing only the polishing of a loving hand to make it ready to slip in place. So we should work faithfully on our pattern, cement it together with ourselves, and polish it with human kindness; and lo! the work slips into place seemingly a perfect whole.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so... many people really seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free. That happens not to be true. What happened was that some people left Europe because they couldn't stay there any longer and had to go someplace else to make it. They were hungry, they were poor, they were convicts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is too late--the world is too dark for any thought ahead. Others are writing my biography, and let it rest as they elect to mak...e it. I have lived my life, well and ill, always less well than I wanted it to be but it is, as it is, and as it has been; so small a thing, to have had so much about it!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »