Quote collection
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"[Kant] was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed imjplicitly in the maximx that he had imbibed at his mother's knee."
"Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity."
"It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth."
"We need a science to save us from science."
"Democracy has at least one merit, namely that a Member of Parliament cannot be stupider than his constituents, for the more stupid he is, the more stupid they were to elect him."
"I cannot escape from the conclusion that the great ages of progress have depended upon a small number of individuals of transcendent ability."
"Another merit of home is that it preserves the diversity between individuals. If we were all alike, it might be convenient for the bureaucrat and the statistician, but it would be very dull, and would lead to a very unprogressive society."
"It must not be supposed that the subjective elements are any less 'real' than the objective elements; they are only less important... because they do not point to anything beyond ourselves."
"The above proposition is occasionally useful."
"I am delighted to know that Principia Mathematica can now be done by machinery. . . I am quite willing to believe that anything in deductive logic can be done by machinery."
"Zeno was concerned with three problems... These are the problem of the infinitesimal, the infinite, and continuity."
"The first essential character [of civilization], I should say, is forethought. This, indeed, is what mainly distinguishes men from brutes and adults from children."
"Certain characteristics of the subject are clear. To begin with, we do not in this subject deal with particular things or particular properties: we deal formally with what can be said about any thing or any property. We are prepared to say that one and one are two, but not that Socrates and Plato are two."
"Great God in Boots! – the ontological argument is sound!"
"In mass cruelty, the expulsions of Germans ordered by the Russians fall not very far short of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis."
"[Industrialism's soon diminishing] capacity to supply human needs could be prevented if men exercised any restraint or foresight in their present frenzied exploitation."
"In detective stories . . . I alternately identify myself with the murderer and the huntsman-detective, but . . . there are those to which this vicarious outlet is too mild."
"In a Balkan country, not so many years ago, a party which had been beaten by a narrow margin in a general election retrieved its fortunes by shooting a sufficient number of the representatives of the other side to give it a majority. . . . Cromwell and Robespierre . . . acted likewise."
"If we compare Europe with other continents, it is marked out as [another] persecuting continent."
"If the West can claim superiority in anything, it is . . . in science and scientific technique."