The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
The hero was distinguished by his achievement; the celebrity by his name or trademark.
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.
Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety.
The American citizen lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly irridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.
The history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.
Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.
We are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in the struggle.
I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn’t taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers’ sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.
Instead of seeing all of this as God's extraordinary grace, we come to expect the comfort and joys that God gives us as the baseline, the measure of what we believe to be our due. When our comfort level drops below our expectations, we are shocked and angered, and even foolishly express our outrage to God Himself.
I challenge you to make your life a masterpiece. I challenge you to join the ranks of those people who live what they teach, who walk their talk.