scale the heavens with assurance,--and also we are biassed to believe
that, except for perversity, all our minds work exactly alike.

Man, thinking man, suffers from intellectual over-confidence and a vain
belief in the universal validity of reasoning.

We all need training, training in the balanced attitude.

Of everything we need to say: this is true but it is not quite true.

Of everything we need to say: this is true in relation to things in or
near its plane, but not true of other things.

Of everything we have to remember: this may be truer for us than for
other people.

In disputation particularly we have to remember this (and most with our
antagonist): that the spirit of an utterance may be better than the
phrase.

We have to discourage the cheap tricks of controversy, the retort, the
search for inconsistency. We have to realize that these things are as
foolish and ill-bred and anti-social as shouting in conversation or
making puns; and we have to work out habits of thought purged from the
sin of assurance. We have to do this for our own good quite as much as
for the sake of intercourse.

All the great and important beliefs by which life is guided and
determined are less of the nature of fact than of artistic expression.