The question of who is right and who is wrong has seemed to me always too small to be worth a moment's thought, while the question of what is right and what is wrong has seemed all-important.

Concerning culture as a process, one would say that it means learning a great many things and then forgetting them; and the forgetting is as necessary as the learning.

Organized Christianity has always represented immortality as a sort of common heritage; but I never could see why spiritual life should not be conditioned on the same terms as all life, i. e., correspondence with environment.

The business of a scientific school is the dissemination of useful knowledge, and this is a noble enterprise and indispensable withal; society can not exist unless it goes on.

Diligent as one must be in learning, one must be as diligent in forgetting; otherwise the process is one of pedantry, not culture.

Life has obliged him to remember so much useful knowledge that he has lost not only his history, but his whole original cargo of useless knowledge; history, languages, literatures, the higher mathematics, or what you will - are all gone.

Assuming that man has a distinct spiritual nature, a soul, why should it be thought unnatural that under appropriate conditions of maladjustment, his soul might die before his body does; or that his soul might die without his knowing it?

Learning has always been made much of, but forgetting has always been deprecated; therefore pedantry has pretty well established itself throughout the modern world at the expense of culture.

I am said to be difficult of acquaintance, unwilling to meet any one half way, and showing a social manner which is easy, not diffident, but formal and unresponsive, tending constantly to hold people off.

The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner.

The position of modern science, as far as an ignorant man of letters can understand it, seems not a step in advance of that held by Huxley and Romanes in the last century.

Perhaps one reason for the falling-off of belief in a continuance of conscious existence is to be found in the quality of life that most of us lead. There is not much in it with which, in any kind of reason, one can associate the idea of immortality.

Perhaps the prevalence of pedantry may be largely accounted for by the common error of thinking that, because useful knowledge should be remembered, any kind of knowledge that is at all worth learning should be remembered too.

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own.

The mind is like the stomach. It is not how much you put into it that counts, but how much it digests.

The university's business is the conservation of useless knowledge; and what the university itself apparently fails to see is that this enterprise is not only noble but indispensable as well, that society can not exist unless it goes on.

As might be supposed, my parents were quite poor, but we somehow never seemed to lack anything we needed, and I never saw a trace of discontent or a failure in cheerfulness over their lot in life, as indeed over anything.

As far as I know, I have no pride of opinion.

Like Prince von Bismarck in diplomacy, I have no secrets.

Considered now as a possession, one may define culture as the residuum of a large body of useless knowledge that has been well and truly forgotten.

Useless knowledge can be made directly contributory to a force of sound and disinterested public opinion.

The question of who is right and who is wrong has seemed to me always too small to be worth a moment's thought, while the question of what is right and what is wrong has seemed all-important.

Someone asked me years ago if it were true that I disliked Jews, and I replied that it was certainly true, not at all because they are Jews but because they are folks, and I don't like folks.

There are two sides to every question.

You look at the whole Human Rights questions, I happened to be there at just the right time when the country was awakening - this goes to the first question you asked - the whole country was awakening to a hundred years of injustice that hadn't been resolved yet.

So, for example, a country was into recession right after I was sworn in, a dot-com bust had taken place. Then the attacks of September the 11th, and then of course the great financial meltdown in the -the fundamental question facing any presidency is how do you deal with the hand you're dealt?

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

Did you hear that? I didn't hear anything. Put that question another way.

If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.

The real question isn't whether you love your kids or not, but how well you are able to demonstrate your love and caring so that your children really feel loved.

There is no question that everybody who works in show business is lucky because of the number of people who wish they where working in show business.

A single question can be more influential than a thousand statements.

He said there is 80 of us, ready to come down and the next thing I knew is that Jo Brown dashed in and said your family has already moved and you have to move, the boat is ready to take you out. I didn't have time to ask, even ask a question.

So begins a question which has of late become more and more urgent: what is the relation of aesthetics to politics?

When artists make art, they shouldn't question whether it is permissible to do one thing or another.

There's another issue here - and I have some limits as to what I can say - but there's some real question as to the viability of the chemical masks, the protective gear used by our soldiers.

This is largely the methodology I've used throughout my career - that is, starting with a question as to what might be the properties of a set of compounds that could be invented which were unusual and unpredictable. Many times I've felt a bit like Columbus setting sail.

In mathematics the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it.

The question is: Where would it get you if something that's a little bit ambiguous in the movie is made clear? It doesn't get you anywhere.

Well, WorldCom's growth exploded in the Clinton years, there's no question, there's no disputing that.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.

By asking a novel question that you don't know the answer to, you discover whether you can formulate a way of finding the answer, and you stretch your own mind, and very often you learn something new.

Slavery is not the only question which comes up in this controversy. There is a far more important one to you, and that is, what shall be done with the free negro?

Will dissent be permitted? The answer to that question will determine whether the society is a free society or a fear society.

Faulkner turned out to be a great teacher. When a student asked a question ineptly, he answered the question with what the student had really wanted to know.

The question was heatedly debated of how much Western culture should be brought into China.

Rock and roll doesn't necessarily mean a band. It doesn't mean a singer, and it doesn't mean a lyric, really. It's that question of trying to be immortal.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.