Without Effort And Change, Human

My Own View On Religion Is . . . It Helped In Early Days To Fix The Calendar, And . . . To Chronicle Eclipses . . . These Two Services I Am Prepared To Acknowledge.

The First Man Who Said "fire Burns" Was Employing Scientific Method, At Any Rate If He Had Allowed Himself To Be Burnt Several Times. This Man Had Already Passed Through The Two Stages Of Observation And Generalization. He Had Not, However, What Scientific Technique Demands - A Careful Choice Of Significant Facts On The One Hand, And, On The Other Hand, Various Means Of Arriving At Laws Otherwise Than My Mere Generalization.

The Knowledge Exists By Which Universal Happiness Can Be Secured; The Chief Obstacle To Its Utilization For That Purpose Is The Teaching Of Religion. Religion Prevents Our Children From Having A Rational Education; Religion Prevents Us From Removing The Fundamental Causes Of War; Religion Prevents Us From Teaching The Ethic Of Scientific Cooperation In Place Of The Old Fierce Doctrines Of Sin And Punishment. It Is Possible That Mankind Is On The Threshold Of A Golden Age; But, If So, It Will Be Necessary First To Slay The Dragon That Guards The Door, And This Dragon Is Religion.

In The Great Depression, Things Could Only Be Set Right By Causing The Idle Plant To Work Again . . . Roosevelt . . . Spent Billions Of Public Money And Created A Huge Public Debt, But By So Doing He Revived Production And Brought His Country Out Of The Depression. Businessmen, Who In Spite Of Such A Sharp Lesson Continued To Believe In Old-fashioned Economics, Were Infinitely Shocked, And Although Roosevelt Saved Them From Ruin, They Continued To Curse Him And To Speak Of Him As 'the Madman In The White House.' . . . [it's One More] Striking Example Of Inability To Learn From Experience.

[kant] Was Like Many People: In Intellectual Matters He Was Skeptical, But In Moral Matters He Believed Imjplicitly In The Maximx That He Had Imbibed At His Mother's Knee.