All media are extensions of some human faculty -- psychic or physical.

What postulate do we implicitly admit? It is that the duration of two identical phenomena is the same; or... that the same causes take the same time to produce the same effects. ...Is it impossible that experiment may some day contradict our postulate?

To sum up: we have seen that of the three notions of 'partial interpretation' discussed, each is either unsuitable for Carnap's purposes (starting with observation terms), or incompatible with a rather minimal scientific realism; and, in addition, the second notion depends upon gross and misleading changes in our use of language. Thus in none of these senses is 'a partially interpreted calculus in which only the observation terms are directly interpreted' an acceptable model for a scientific theory.

There was never a time when the world began, because it goes round and round like a circle, and there is no place on a circle where it begins. Look at my watch, which tells the time; it goes round, and so the world repeats itself again and again. But just as the hour-hand of the watch goes up to twelve and down to six, so, too, there is day and night, waking and sleeping, living and dying, summer and winter. You can't have any one of these without the other, because you wouldn't be able to know what black is unless you had seen it side-by-side with white, or white unless side-by-side with black.

Everyday we act in ways that reflect our ethical judgements.

It would be better if they [rulers] compelled the Jews to work for their living, as they do in parts of Italy, than that, living without occupation, they can grow rich only by usury .

With regard to politics and the character of princes and great men, I think I am very moderate. My views of things are more conformable to Whig principles; my representation of persons to Tory prejudices. Nothing can so much prove that men commonly regard more persons than things, as to find that I am commonly numbered among the Tories.

The flesh receives as unlimited the limits of pleasure; and to provide it requires unlimited time. But the mind, intellectually grasping what the end and limit of the flesh is, and banishing the terrors of the future, procures a complete and perfect life, and we have no longer any need of unlimited time. Nevertheless the mind does not shun pleasure, and even when circumstances make death imminent, the mind does not lack enjoyment of the best life.

I can assure you that there is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life. You learn that which is of inestimable importance - that there are a great many people in the world who are just as clever as you are. You learn to put your trust, by and by, in an economy and frugality of the exercise of your powers, both moral and intellectual; and you very soon find out, if you have not found it out before, that patience and tenacity of purpose are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.

The vicious lover is the follower of earthly Love who desires the body rather than the soul; his heart is set on what is mutable and must therefore be inconstant. And as soon as the body he loves begins to pass the first flower of its beauty, he "spreads his wings and flies away," giving the lie to all his pretty speeches and dishonoring his vows, whereas the lover whose heart is touched by moral beauties is constant all his life, for he has become one with what will never fade.

He who perceives death perceives a sense of the human comedy, and quickly becomes a poet.

Americans must be the most sententious people in history. Far too busy to be religious, they have always felt that they sorely needed guidance.

I needed to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only without turning away from, but with a greatly increased interest in the common feelings and common destiny of human beings.

It is all too easy to forget that there are emotional motivations in history, as well as economic ones.

When any work seems to have required immense force and labor to affect it, the idea is grand. Stonehenge, neither for disposition nor ornament, has anything admirable; but those huge rude masses of stone, set on end, and piled each on other, turn the mind on the immense force necessary for such a work. Nay, the rudeness of the work increases this cause of grandeur, as it excludes the idea of art and contrivance; for dexterity produces another sort of effect, which is different enough from this.

Feuerbach is saying: No, wait a minute - if you are going to be allowed to go on living as you are living, then you also have to admit that you are not Christians. Feuerbach has understood the requirements but cannot force himself to submit to them - ergo, he prefers to renounce being a Christian. And now, no matter how great a responsibility he must bear, he takes a position that is not unsound, that is, it is wrong of established Christendom to say that Feuerbach is attacking Christianity; it is not true, he is attacking the Christians by demonstrating that their lives do not correspond to the teachings of Christianity.

An honest man nearly always thinks justly.

We are always on stage, even when we are stabbed in earnest at the end.

Though the coming of the day is still the most inspiriting, yet day's departure, also, and the return of night refresh, renew, and quiet us; and in the pastures of the dusk we stand, like cattle, exulting in the absence of the load.

For we have in Latin only a few small streams and muddy puddles, while they have pure springs and rivers flowing in gold. I see that it is utter madness even to touch with the little finger that branch of theology that deals chiefly with the divine mysteries, unless one is also provided with the equipment of Greek.

I think he who knows himself will know accurately, not the opinion of others about him, but what he is in reality... he ought to discover within himself what is right for him to do and not learn it from without...

Observe always that everything is the result of a change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and to make new ones like them.

My master Attalus used to say: "Evil herself drinks the largest portion of her own poison." The poison which serpents carry for the destruction of others, and secrete without harm to themselves, is not like this poison; for this sort is ruinous to the possessor.

The universe is flux, life is opinion. The universe is (constant) change, life is (mere) presumption.

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome.

Declining from the public ways, walk in unfrequented paths.

I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.

By the removal of the unnecessary mouths, and by extracting from the farmer the full value of the farm, a greater surplus, or what is the same thing, the price of a greater surplus, was obtained for the proprietor...

Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.

For tribal man, space was the uncontrollable mystery. For technological man it is time that occupies the same role.

For the trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. In this sense, truth, even if it does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of all rationality.

All those events in history were such dramas as we see now, only with different actors.

Sociology is the science which has the most methods and the least results.

It was under Catholic Feudalism that they were first united; a union for which their incorporation into the Roman empire had prepared them, and which was finally organized by the incomparable genius of Charlemagne.

What am I, other than a chance in the infinite probabilities of not having been!

The ancient Egyptians had a superstitious antipathy to the sea; a superstition nearly of the same kind prevails among the Indians; and the Chinese have never excelled in foreign commerce.

God is surrounded with people full of love who demand of him the benefits of love which are in his power: thus he is properly the king of love.

Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

It is somewhat strange to me, that neither the Spagyrists themselves, nor yet their Adversaries, should have taken notice that Chymists have rather supposed than evinced, that the Analysis of bodies by fire, or even that at least some Analysis is the onely instrument of investigating what Ingredients mixt bodies are made up of, since in divers cases That may be discovered by Composition as well as by Resolution; as it may appear, that Vitriol consists of metalline parts (whether Martial, or Venereal, or both) associated by Coagulation with acid ones, one may, I say, discover this as well by making true Vitriol with Spirit (improperly called Oil) of Sulphur, or that of Salt, as by distilling or Resolving Vitriol by the fire.

Dear youths, I warn you cherish peace divine, And in your hearts lay deep these words of mine.

Cultivate that kind of knowledge which enables us to discover for ourselves in case of need that which others have to read or be told of.

So potent was Religion in persuading to do wrong.

Eros, erotic desire, conquers depression. It delivers us from the inferno of the same to the utopia, indeed utopia, of the wholly other.

Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.