Three Passions, Simple But Overwhelmingly Strong, Have

If You Question Any Candid Person Who Is No Longer Young, He Is Very Likely To Tell You That, Having Tasted Life In This World, He Has No Wish To Begin Again As A "new Boy" In Another.

It Seems To Us Unwise To Have Insisted On Teaching Geometry To The Younger Dionysius, Tyrant Of Syracuse, In Order To Make Him A Good King, But From Plato's Point Of View It Was Essential. He Was Sufficiently Pythagorean To Think That Without Mathematics No True Wisdom Is Possible.

All The Time That He Can Spare From The Adornment Of His Person, He Devotes To The Neglect Of His Duties.

I Wish To Propose For The Reader's Favourable Consideration A Doctrine Which May, I Fear, Appear Wildly Paradoxical And Subversive. The Doctrine In Question Is This: That It Is Undesirable To Believe A Proposition When There Is No Ground Whatever For Supposing It True.

To Teach How To Live Without Certainty And Yet Without Being Paralysed By Hesitation Is Perhaps The Chief Thing That Philosophy, In Our Age, Can Do For Those Who Study It.