It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages.
In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of a defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress towards a victory.
The ultimate metaphysical ground is the creative advance into novelty.
The major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur.
True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
To be an abstraction does not mean that an entity is nothing. It merely means that its existence is only a factor of a more concrete element of nature.
Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim. Wisdom the source of virtue, and of fame, Obtained with labor, for mankind employed, And then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.
The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.
The point of mathematics is that in it we have always got rid of the particular instance, and even of any particular sorts of entities. So that for example, no mathematical truths apply merely to fish, or merely to stones, or merely to colours. So long as you are dealing with pure mathematics, you are in the realm of complete and absolute abstraction. . . . Mathematics is thought moving in the sphere of complete abstraction from any particular instance of what it is talking about.
