Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire. -- Nietzsche

What is the first business of one who studies philosophy? To part with self-conceit. For it is impossible for any one to begin to learn what he thinks that he already knows. -- Epictetus, How to apply general Principles to particular Cases, Chap. xvii.

If a man will begin with certainties he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties. -- Francis Bacon

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. -- H. L. Mencken

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite. -- Bertrand Russell, Skeptical Essays, 1928

Men are so constituted that every one undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has aptitude for it or not. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. -- Elbert Green Hubbard

To err is human - but it feels divine. -- Mae West

Bershere's Formula for Failure: There are only two kinds of people who fail: those who listen to nobody... and those who listen to everybody.

They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!

We have enough youth, how about a fountain of Smarts?

Old age is too high a price to pay for maturity.

No one can make you feel inferior without your permission. -- Eleanor Roosevelt

One is not truly alive if he can find someone from which nothing can be learned. -- Unknown

Intelligence is like a river: the deeper it is, the less noise it makes. -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (?)

Fortune was not so completely unfriendly to him that she did not leave him some brief reminder of the force of his intelligence. -- Niccolo Machiavelli, Art of War, 1516

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James

This is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. -- Doris Lessing