I cleave the heavens and soar to the infinite. And while I rise from my own globe to others And penetrate ever further through the eternal field, That which others saw from afar, I leave far behind me. Variant translation: While I venture out beyond this tiny globe Into reaches past the bounds of starry night I leave behind what others strain to see afar.

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

Fundamental ideas play the most essential role in forming a physical theory. Books on physics are full of complicated mathematical formulae. But thought and ideas, not formulae, are the beginning of every physical theory. The ideas must later take the mathematical form of a quantitative theory, to make possible the comparison with experiment.

And of universal nature, the notion I would offer, should be something like this. Nature is the aggregate of the bodies, that make up the world, in its present state, considered as a principle, by virtue whereof, they act and suffer, according to the laws of motion, prescribed by the author of things.

To the Deity must be left the task of infinite perfection, while to us poor, weak, incapable mortals, there was no rule of conduct so safe as experience.

You take souls for vegetables.... The gardener can decide what will become of his carrots but no one can choose the good of others for them.

Another doctrine repugnant to Civill Society, is that whatsoever a man does against his Conscience, is Sinne; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of Good and Evill. For a man's Conscience and his Judgement are the same thing, and as the Judgement, so also the Conscience may be erroneous.

Among human beings, the subjection of women is much more complete at a certain level of civilization than it is among savages. And the subjection is always reinforced by morality.

Truly it is a sad thing for a people, as for a man, to fall into Scepticism, into dilettantism, insincerity; not to know Sincerity when they see it. For this world, and for all worlds, what curse is so fatal?

There is absolutely no inevitability, so long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.

I don't say it was deliberate fraud. He was probably madly sincere, and sincerely mad.

In the presence of the total reality upon which our conduct is founded, our knowledge is characterized by peculiar limitations and aberrations. We cannot say in principle that "error is life and knowledge is death," because a being involved in persistent errors would continually act wide of the purpose, and would thus inevitably perish.

We do not directly go about the execution of the purpose that thrills us, but shut our doors behind us, and ramble with prepared minds, as if the half were already done. Our resolution is taking root or hold on the earth then, as seeds first send a shoot downward, which is fed by their own albumen, ere they send one upwards to the light.

It is a cliché that the modern scientific vision has desacralized the world, and the world desacralized by scientific knowledge has become one of the existential elements that make up modern man, all the more so to the degree that he is "civilized." Ever since he has been subject to compulsory education, his mind has been stuffed with "positive" scientific notions; he cannot avoid seeing in a soulless light everything that surrounds him, and therefore acts destructively. What, for example, could the symbol of the sunset of a dynasty, like the Japanese, mean to him when he knows scientifically what the sun is: merely a star, at which one can even fire missiles.

The great problems of life - sexuality, of course, among others - are always related to the primordial images of the collective unconscious. These images are really balancing or compensating factors which correspond with the problems life presents in actuality. This is not to be marvelled at, since these images are deposits representing the accumulated experience of thousands of years of struggle for adaptation and existence.

Within the last fifty years, the extraordinary growth of every department of physical science has spread among us mental food of so nutritious and stimulating a character that a new ecdysis seems imminent.

The greatness of the human being consists in this: that it is capable of the universe.

The nature of the Absolute State consists herein, -that all individual powers be directed towards the Life of the Race,-in place of which Race, the State puts the aggregate of its own Citizens. It therefore becomes necessary, first, that all Individuals, without exception, should be taken into equal consideration by the State; and second, that every Individual, with all his individual powers, without exception or reserve, should be taken into equal consideration. In a State so constituted, where all, as Individuals, are dedicated to the Race, it follows at the same time, that all without exception, with all the Rights which belong to them as component parts of the Race, are dedicated to all the other individual members of the State.

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality. 

A brilliant man is his own best company, unless he can find other company of the same sort.

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.

Systems, scientific and philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance.

True, the law is sacred to the bourgeois, for it is his own composition, enacted with his consent, and for his benefit and protection. He knows that, even if an individual law should injure him, the whole fabric protects his interests; and more than all, the sanctity of the law, the sacredness of order as established by the active will of one part of society, and the passive acceptance of the other, is the strongest support of his social position. Because the English bourgeois finds himself reproduced in his law, as he does in his God, the policeman's truncheon which, in a certain measure, is his own club, has for him a wonderfully soothing power. But for the working-man quite otherwise! The working-man knows too well, has learned from too oft-repeated experience, that the law is a rod which the bourgeois has prepared for him; and when he is not compelled to do so, he never appeals to the law.

The truth is always in the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because as a rule the minority is made up of those who actually have an opinion, while the strength of the majority is illusory, formed of that crowd which has no opinion - and which therefore the next moment (when it becomes clear that the minority is the stronger) adopts the latter's opinion, which now is in the majority, i.e. becomes rubbish by having the whole retinue and numerousness on its side, while the truth is again in a new minority.

Is it for this purpose that we are strong-that we may have light burdens to bear?

Our intellectual development in the field of science has outstripped our human development in the field of character.

I am enraptured by Hindu philosophy, whose essential endeavor is to surmount the self; and everything I do, everything I think is only myself and the selfs humiliations.

Yes - you, you alone must pay for everything because you turned up like this, because I'm a scoundrel, because I'm the nastiest, most ridiculous, pettiest, stupidest, and most envious worm of all those living on earth who're no better than me in any way, but who, the devil knows why, never get embarrassed, while all my life I have to endure insults from every louse - that's my fate. What do I care that you do not understand any of this?

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

He who boasts of his descent, praises the deeds of another.

For it was my master who taught me not only how very little I knew but also that any wisdom to which I might ever aspire could consist only in realizing more fully the infinity of my ignorance.

Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.

To God, truly, the Giver and Architect of Forms, and it may be to the angels and higher intelligences, it belongs to have an affirmative knowledge of forms immediately, and from the first contemplation. But this assuredly is more than man can do, to whom it is granted only to proceed at first by negatives, and at last to end in affirmatives, after exclusion has been exhausted.

Metaphysical assertions, however, are statements of the psyche, and are therefore psychological. ... Whenever the Westerner hears the word "psychological," it always sounds to him like "only psychological."

The dissimulation of the woven texture can in any case take centuries to undo its web: a web that envelops a web, undoing the web for centuries; reconstituting it too as an organism, indefinitely regenerating its own tissue behind the cutting trace, the decision of each reading. There is always a surprise in store for the anatomy or physiology of any criticism that might think it had mastered the game, surveyed all the threads at once, deluding itself, too, in wanting to look at the text without touching it, without laying a hand on the "object," without risking- which is the only chance of entering into the game, by getting a few fingers caught- the addition of some new thread.

But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.

Consumption is also immediately production, just as in nature the consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the production of the plant.

The ideal of strictly scientific method in mathematics which I have tried to realise here, and which perhaps might be named after Euclid I should like to describe in the following way... The novelty of this book does not lie in the content of the theorems but in the development of the proofs and the foundations on which they are based... With this book I accomplish an object which I had in view in my Begriffsschrift of 1879 and which I announced in my Grundlagen der Arithmetik. I am here trying to prove the opinion on the concept of number that I expressed in the book last mentioned.

It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. All dynamic action, or action of brute force, physical or psychical, either takes place between two subjects, - whether they react equally upon each other, or one is agent and the other patient, entirely or partially, - or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs. But by "semiosis" I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs.

There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless.

I cannot read a sentence in the book of the Hindoos without being elevated as upon the table-land of the Ghauts. It has such a rhythm as the winds of the desert, such a tide as the Ganges, and seems as superior to criticism as the Himmaleh Mounts. Even at this late hour, unworn by time with a native and inherent dignity it wears the English dress as indifferently as the Sanscrit.

You have theories enough concerning the Rights of Men. It may not be amiss to add a small degree of attention to their Nature and disposition.

The cautious seldom err.