Society and the World

Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

The Real War Will Never Get in the Books . And so good-bye to the war.

Passage to India.

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,

The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.

The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.

To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two very differentthings, as the history of a science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two very differentthings, as the history of a science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle—they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisivemoments.

In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom; it is impatient of oppression, and pants for deliverance; and by the leave of our modern Egyptians I will assert, that the same principle lives in us.

In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom; it is impatient of oppression, and pants for deliverance; and by the leave of our modern Egyptians I will assert, that the same principle lives in us.

Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach.

’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

The worst of doing one’s duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.

The worst of doing one’s duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.

Are we not Men?

[ Punch line of joke about a scorpion stinging a frogthat is carrying him across a river despite the fact that this would result in both their deaths :] I can’t help it. It’s my nature.

The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either toreasons of state, or to any consideration ofmoney, nationality, race, or color, or to themoral or other value attributed to the humanbeing in question, or to any considerationwhatsoever.

The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either toreasons of state, or to any consideration ofmoney, nationality, race, or color, or to themoral or other value attributed to the humanbeing in question, or to any considerationwhatsoever.

Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses.

Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses.

[ After Randolph Churchill’s lung was removedand found not to have malignancies :] A typicaltriumph of modern science to find the onlypart of Randolph that was not malignant andremove it.

Any one who has been to an English publicschool will always feel comparatively at home in prison.

In the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. No one would think of makingan after-dinner speech without the help ofpoetry. It used to be the classics, now it’s lyric verse.