The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be. - George Santayana

A certain vagueness of soul, together with a great gregariousness and tendency to be moulded by example and by prevalent opinion, is requisite for feeling free under English liberty. You must find the majority right enough to live with; you must give up lost causes; you must be willing to put your favourite notions to sleep in the family cradle of convention. Enthusiasts for democracy, peace, and a league of nations should not deceive themselves; they are not everybody’s friends; they are the enemies of what is deepest and most primitive in everybody. They inspire undying hatred in every untamable people and every absolute soul.

[The empiricist] thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

Mein Leben durchgestürmt; erst gross und mächtig, Nun aber geht es weise, geht bedächtig.