Society and the World

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

It is not the business of science to inherit the earth, but to inherit the moral imagination; because without that, man and beliefs and science will perish together.

It is not the business of science to inherit the earth, but to inherit the moral imagination; because without that, man and beliefs and science will perish together.

It is not the business of science to inherit the earth, but to inherit the moral imagination; because without that, man and beliefs and science will perish together.

Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

I like to have a man’s knowledge comprehend more than one class of topics, one row of shelves. I like a man who likes to see a fine barn as well as a good tragedy.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.

If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.

Thought is action in rehearsal.

A cup is useful only when it is empty; and a mind that is filled with beliefs, with dogmas, with assertions, with quotations is really an uncreative mind.

Serving God is doing good to man. But praying is thought an easier service and is therefore more generally chosen.

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.

Quarrels would not last long if the fault were on one side only.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

The thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never any good to oneself.

A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.

Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.

A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something.

There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides.