There's a great difference between knowing that a thing is so, and knowing how to use that knowledge for the good of mankind. The ...trouble with a scientist is we quickly tire of our discoveries. We hand them over to people who are not ready for them, while we go off again into the darkness of ignorance, searching for other discoveries, which will be mishandled in just the same way when the time comes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Love no man in good earnest, nor no further in sport neither, than with safety of a pure blush thou mayst in... honor come off again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Human life is so strangely constituted that even perfected intellectual understanding combined with the richest experience is inca...pable of conquering innate weaknesses. Even if it thoroughly analyzes itself, psychology (and this is one of the dubious aspects of psychoanalysis) can, to be sure, recognize its flawed native characteristics, but it cannot eliminate them. Understanding (them) is not the same as overcoming (them) and, again and again, we see the wisest of human beings helpless in the fact of their small follies which everyone else observes with a smile.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Again and again, faith in a possible satisfaction of the human race breaks through at the very moments of most zealous discord bec...ause humankind will never be able to live and work without this consoling delusion of its ascent into morality, without this dream of final and ultimate accord.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hearing, seeing and understanding each other, humanity from one end of the earth to the other now lives simultaneously, omnipresen...t like a god thanks to its own creative ability. And, thanks to its victory over space and time, it would now be splendidly united for all time, if it were not confused again and again by that fatal delusion which causes humankind to keep on destroying this grandiose unity and to destroy itself with the same resources which gave it power over the elements.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Oh, yes, I'd do it all again; the spirit is willing yet; I feel the same desire to do the work but the flesh is weak. It's too bad... that our bodies wear out while our interests are just as strong as ever.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are real...ities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There will be a new church founded on moral science, at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger again, the algebra and mathematic...s of ethical law, the church of men to come, without shams, or psaltery, or sackbut; but it will have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters; science for symbol and illustration; it will fast enough gather beauty, music, picture, poetry. Was never stoicism so stern and exigent as this shall be. It shall send man home to his central solitude, shame these social, supplicating manners, and make him know that much of the time he must have himself to his friend. He shall expect no cooperation, he shall walk with no companion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »