Be convinced that, if man were able to reach the end without preparatory studies, such studies would not be preparatory but tiresome and utterly superfluous.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?
I would say that the study of history is that which gives man the greatest optimism, for if man were not destined by his Maker to go on until the Kingdom of Heaven is attained, man would have been extinguished long ago by reason of all man's mistakes and frailties.
There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.
So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one expect anything certain from astronomy, which cannot furnish it, lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose, and depart from this study a greater fool than when he entered it.
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.
This is the great vice of academicism, that it is concerned with ideas rather than with thinking.
It seems to me that man is made to act rather than to know: the principles of things escape our most persevering researches.
Higher education must lead the march back to the fundamentals of human relationships, to the old discovery that is ever new, that man does not live by bread alone.
Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.
There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight.