Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin, more even than death.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation will you prefer the grain to the vote?

A man's acts are partly determined by spontaneous impulse, partly by the conscious and unconscious effects of the various groups to which he belongs.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt.

Even when experts all agree, they may be mistaken.

Science is no substitute for virtue; the heart is as necessary for a good life as the head.

It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit: divorced from it, they remain barren.

I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.