Skip to content

Every man has some peculiar train of thought which he falls back upon when he is alone. This, to a great degree, moulds the man.

— Dugald Stewart

Another quote →

Topics

Mind

More quotes by Dugald Stewart

Nothing, in truth, has such a tendency to weaken not only the powers of invention, but the intellectual powers in general, as a habit of extensive and various reading without reflection.

An uncommon degree of imagination constitutes poetical genius; a talent which, although chiefly displayed in poetical composition, is also the foundation (though not precisely in the same manner) of various other arts.

THE prejudice which is commonly entertained against metaphysical speculations seems to arise chiefly from two causes: First, from an apprehension that the subjects about which they are employed, are placed beyond the reach of the human faculties; and, secondly, from a belief that these subjects have no relation to the business of life.

All Dugald Stewart quotes →

You may also like

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973)

The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.

Friedrich Schiller On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Dugald Stewart (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.