The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
Philosophy begins in wonder. And at the end when philosophic thought has done its best the wonder remains.
The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.
A science that hesitates to forget its founders is lost.
It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.
The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment… We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.
The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, ‘Seek simplicity and distrust it.
In the conditions of modern life the rule is absolute, the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed.
The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, ‘Seek simplicity and distrust it.
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.