I was sort of miserable and depressed. Music was my savior, but it was also the thing that I felt at times was breaking my heart.
Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal.
The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her.
Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals, so that unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape, he is the shaper of the landscape.
That series of inventions by which man from age to age has remade his environment is a different kind of evolution -- not biological, but cultural evolution. . . "The Ascent of Man.
The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well. And having done it well, he loves to do it better.
Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner.
If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a word or song, if I can show somebody he's traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain.
Ah, fortune and fame shall follow me. . . and I shall dwell in the world of the chosen for a few moments of fleeting ecstasy; ere the seven burly lads turn into creditors and hustle me off to debtors' prison at last.
Half the Christian churches of New York are trying to ruin the free public schools in order to replace them by religious dogma.