“Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.”

“Philosophy begins in wonder. And at the end when philosophic thought has done its best the wonder remains.”

“We cannot think first and act afterwards. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only guide it by taking thought.”

“Religion carries two sorts of people in two entirely opposite directions: the mild and gentle people it carries towards mercy and justice; the persecuting people it carries into fiendish sadistic cruelty. Mind you, though this may seem to justify the eighteenth-century Age of Reason in its contention that religion is nothing but an organized, gigantic fraud and a curse to the human race, nothing could be farther from the truth. It possesses these two aspects, the evil one of the two appealing to people capable of naïve hatred; but what is actually happening is that when you get natures stirred to their depths over questions which they feel to be overwhelmingly vital, you get the bad stirred up in them as well as the good; the mud as well as the water. It doesn't seem to matter much which sect you have, for both types occur in all sects....”

“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them. ”

“The art of progress is to reserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.”

“Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.”