“Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.”

“Ashamed of the many Frailties they feel within, all Men endeavour to hide themselves, their Ugly Nakedness, from each other, and wrapping up the true Motives of their Hearts in the Specious Cloke of Sociableness, and their Concern for the publick Good, they are in hopes of concealing their filthy Appetites and the Deformity of their Desires.”

“God's commandment is that those who serve Him must separate themselves from the world.”

“They [human beings] are unwilling to gamble that God made those people who are skilled at rational argumentation uniquely virtuous. They protect themselves and others from cleverness by obscuring their preferences.”

“Scientists are just as vulnerable to wishful thinking, just as likely to be tempted by base motives, just as venal and gullible and forgetful as the rest of humankind. Scientists don't consider themselves to be saints; they don't even pretend to be priests (who according to tradition are supposed to do a better job than the rest of us at fighting off human temptation and frailty). Scientists take themselves to be just as weak and fallible as anybody else, but recognizing those very sources of error in themselves and in the groups to which they belong, they have devised elaborate systems to tie their own hands, forcibly preventing their frailties and prejudices from infecting their results.”

“Down the ages / they conduct their long monologue: / can'y you hear? / They hope for it from others, / wait for ones like themselves, / they were born that way. / And so has the world been arranged / that those others grow weary / and begin to take care of the chores.”

“I always give 'rest to rest' and hope I will not retire from active politics.”

“You have rescued philosophy from those who would make it a mere refuge from disappointment, and converted it into a dynamic inspiration to higher action for service.”

“People who require from others to take them «as they are» usually don't seek to take the others as they are.”

“When human beings banish God from the world, they make Gods of themselves.”