I do not know which makes a man more conservative - to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past - J M Keynes (The end of laissez faire, 1926)
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me - Isaac Newton
He who does not ask a question learns nothing - African tribe Swahili
Have a variety of interests... These interests relax the mind and lessen tension on the nervous system. People with many interests live, not only longest, but happiest - George Matthew Allen
For the Victorians, everything was part of one thing - science, religion, philosophy, economics, politics, women, poetry. They didn't compartmentalise - they thought big - A.S. Byatt, quoted in New Statesman, 27/04/09
Few minds wear out; most rust out - Christian Bov
Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another's dogmatism - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everything that happens to you is your teacher. The secret is to learn to sit at the feet of your own life and be taught by it - Polly B. Berends
Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm - Benjamin Disraeli
Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting - Aldous Huxley