A classical understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. A romantic understanding sees it primarily in terms of immediate appearance.

Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive.

Morals can't function normally because morals have been declared intellectually illegal by the subject object metaphysics that dominates present social thought

If Quality were dropped, only rationality would remain unchanged.

Oh, the laws of physics and of logic…the number system…the principle of algebraic substitution. These are ghosts. We just believe in them so thoroughly they seem real.

One thing about pioneers that you don’t hear mentioned is that they are invariably, by their nature, mess-makers.

The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away.

Some things you miss because they’re so tiny you overlook them. But some things you don’t see because they’re so huge.

What keeps the world from reverting to the Neanderthal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos... the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man...

Motivation of this sort, once it catches hold, is a ferocious force, and in the gradeless, degreeless institution where our student would find himself, he wouldn’t stop with rote engineering information.

He’d no longer be a grade-motivated person. He’d be a knowledge-motivated person.

Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.

Science grows by its mu answers more than by its yes or no answers.

Bouncing on beds, I remember from childhood, is a great depression reliever.

My favorite cure for boredom is sleep. It's very easy to get to sleep when bored and very hard to get bored after a long rest.

Like trying to keep a fatman out of the refrigerator. 'Lila

First you get the feeling, then you figure out why.

The classic mode, by contrast, proceeds by reason and by laws—which are themselves underlying forms of thought and behavior.

Grades really cover up failure to teach.

Stuckness shouldn’t be avoided. It’s the psychic predecessor of all real understanding.

The idea that “all men are created equal” is a gift to the world from the American Indian.

The solutions all are simple—after you have arrived at them. But they're simple only when you know already what they are.

Not sure of much of anything these days. Maybe that’s why I talk so much.

The past cannot remember the past. The future can’t generate the future. The cutting edge of this instant right here and now is always nothing less than the totality of everything there is.

When any distribution is locked into a rigid sequential format it develops Joes that dictate what new changes will be allowed and what will not, and that rigidity is deadly.

You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in.

You always suppress momentary anger at something you deeply and permanently hate.

We always condemn most in others, he thought, that which we most fear in ourselves.

It is a kind of nowhere, famous for nothing at all and has an appeal because of just that.

You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge.

Do what is “reasonable” even when it isn’t any good.

Whole community of millions of living things living out their lives in a kind of benign continuum.

That’s the way the world keeps on happening. Be interested in it.

The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality.

The stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep.

It’s important now to just live with this and not fight it mentally…mind control….

An experiment is never a failure solely because it fails to achieve predicted results.

Familiarity can blind you

He came to see his early failure as a lucky break, an accidental escape from a trap that had been set for him, and he was very trap-wary about institutional truths for the remainder of his time.

Metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life; otherwise forget it.

To all appearances he was just drifting. In actuality he was just drifting. Drifting is what one does when looking at lateral truth.

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire.

That's the way it is. The intelligence of the mind can't think of any reason to live, but it goes on anyway because the intelligence of the cells can't think of any reason to die

Mental reflection os so much more interesting than tv [that]it's a shame more people don't switch over to it. They probably think what they hear is unimportant, but it never is.

When you’ve got a Chautauqua in your head, it’s extremely hard not to inflict it on innocent people.

The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling.

It’s an old split. Like the one between art and art history. One does it and the other talks about how it’s done and the talk about how it’s done never seems to match how one does it.

Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past. Ghosts and more ghosts. Ghosts trying to find their place among the living.

I am a pioneer now, looking onto a promised land.

To the ocean. That sounds right. Where the waves roll in slowly and there’s always a roar and you can’t fall anywhere. You’re already there.