Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience.
To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two different things, as the history of science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by someone who did not discover it.
To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.
Without deductive logic science would be entirely useless. It is merely a barren game to ascend from the particular to the general, unless afterwards we can reverse the process and descend from the general to the particular, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder.
In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.
The power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act, of that which Plato divined in theory.
In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows: for details are swallowed up in principles.
Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system.
The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.
Our rate of progress is such that an individual human being, of ordinary length of life, will be called on to face novel situations which find no parallel in his past. The fixed person, for the fixed duties, who, in older societies was such a godsend, in the future will be a public danger.
The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it.
Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realised; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.
We must not expect simple answers to far-reaching questions. However far our gaze penetrates, there are always heights beyond which block our vision.
The whole of mathematics consists in the organization of a series of aids to the imagination in the process of reasoning.
The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.
The term many presupposes the term one , and the term one presupposes the term many.
Identification of rhythm as the casual counterpart of life; wherever there is some life, only perceptible to us when the analogies are sufficiently close.
The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciation of beauty, and of intellectual distinction, and of duty.
The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth-while.
It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.
I always feel that I have two duties to perform with a parting guest: one, to see that he doesn't forget anything that is his; the other, to see that he doesn't take anything that is mine.
Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language.
The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not liberal, and no liberal education which is not technical.
All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words.
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