In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.
If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.
Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.
An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.
To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.
The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.
Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.
To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.
An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.
A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.
Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
The only road to the highest stations in this country is that of the law.
And I was lucky enough to have teachers that really, really looked out for me and really encouraged all that. And in rural Louisiana, that was a rare thing back then.
I did not win and in fact I was called into the principal's office for a consultation with my parents. But that was the beginning of my literary career.
I have known lots of adults who enjoyed similar enthusiasms as a kid and weren't encouraged and then didn't go anywhere with it and so they're unhappy in their jobs as adults.
I just took the idea that King Kong was too big for everything and reversed it and put George in a land of giants, which is basically what every kid goes through anyway - that, you know, the world is made for grownups, for tall people, for the giants...
I like stirring things up. I'm on the side of the kids more than I am on the adults. And occasionally I find some adults that have that same mischievous streak, so I don't get in too much trouble.
