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The important fact of the present time is not the struggle between capitalism and socialism but the struggle between industrial civilization and humanity.
 
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
 
Of necessity, the autobiographical self is not just about one individual but about all the others that an individual interacts with. Of necessity, it incorporates the culture in which the interactions took place.
 
Humility is no substitute for a good personality.
 
Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be opened by dialing a certain word or number, so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it.
 
Ultimately, fear of failure generates a vicious circle that creates what is most feared. To break this cycle, you need to make peace with failure. It isn't enough to merely tolerate it; you need to appreciate the failure and use it ...
 
There is no one, no matter how wise he is, who has not in his youth said things or done things that are so unpleasant to recall in later life that he would expunge them entirely from his memory if that were possible.
 
What we see depends on mainly what we look for.
 
The loss of a thing affects us until we have lost it altogether.
 
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
 
We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.
 
Anyone can become angry —that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way —this is not easy.
 
I do not believe that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislature, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance.
 
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
 
History is made by historians. No event becomes a historic event unless historians turn it into one.
 
We are struggling with language. We are engaged in a struggle with language.
 
If our need for status is fundamental, this discomfort we feel about admitting it may seem surprising. But we tend to believe the brain’s heroic story, not the subconscious realpolitik of the game. To admit to being motivated by improving our rank risks making others think less of us, which loses us rank. Even admitting it to ourselves can make us feel reduced. So our awareness of our desire for status eats itself. We readily recognise it in rivals and even use it as a method of insult – which, ironically, is status play: an attempt to downgrade others and thereby raise ourselves up.
 
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, wityout any other reason but because they are not common.
 
We see what we see because we miss all the finer details.
 
CLASSIC: In literature, a book that everybody wants to have read but nobody wants to read.
 
2718 quotes