The physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus .

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment.

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

One main factor in the upward trend of animal life has been the power of wandering.

The certainty of mathematics depends on its complete abstract generality.

Apart from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the perfume of hints and suggestions.

The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God's vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World's multiplicity of effort.

The misconception which has haunted philosophic literature throughout the centuries is the notion of 'independent existence.' There is no such mode of existence; every entity is to be understood in terms of the way it is interwoven with the rest of the universe.

A race preserves its vigor so long as it harbors a real contrast between what has been and what may be; and so long as it is nerved by the vigor to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

A great society is a society in which its men of business think greatly of their functions.

From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.

The preternatural solemnity of a good many of the professionally religious is to me a point against them.

I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are cavalry charges in a battle -- they are limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.

In modern times the belief that the ultimate explanation of all things was to be found in Newtonian mechanics was an adumbration of the truth that all science, as it grows towards perfection, becomes mathematical in its ideas.

No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.

Unfortunately, mathematics is always encumbered by the repetition in text-books of numberless subsidiary propositions, whose importance has been lost by their absorption into the role of particular cases of more general truths -- and, as we have already insisted, generality is the soul of mathematics.

You may not divide the seamless coat of learning.

In this modern world, the celibacy of the medieval learned class has been replaced by a celibacy of the intellect which is divorced from the concrete contemplation of the complete facts.

Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth.