"The term 'simplicity' functions then merely as a disguise for another meaning than its own. It is used for smuggling an essential quality into our appreciation of a scientific theory, which a mistaken conception of objectivity forbids us to openly acknowledge."

“Whitehead and Russell ... translate \vdash p imples q into the words 'it is asserted that p implies q. But the phrase 'it is asserted' suggests an impersonal happening of assertions: 'it is asserted' as 'it is raining' or 'it happens'. The value of the assertion sign is lost if we allow ourselves to revert in our verbal translation of it to the muddle of a declaratory sentence which asserts itself or is impersonally asserted by nobody in particular.”

“When order is achieved among human beings by allowing them to interact with each other on their own initiative — subject only to the laws which uniformly apply to all of them — we have a system of spontaneous order in society.”

“To learn by example is to submit to authority. ...By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. These hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of another. A society which wants to preserve a fund of personal knowledge must submit to tradition. ...Common Law ...is the most important system of strictly traditional activities.”

“Comprehension is neither an arbitrary act nor a passive experience, but a responsible act claiming universal validity. Such knowing is indeed objective in the sense of establishing contact with a hidden reality; a contact that is defined as the condition for anticipating an indeterminate range of yet unknown true implications. It seems reasonable to describe this fusion of the personal and the objective as Personal Knowledge. Personal knowledge is an intellectual commitment, and as such inherently hazardous. Only affirmations that could be false can be said to convey objective knowledge of this kind.”

“While the articulate contents of science are successfully taught all over the world in hundreds of universities, the unspecifiable art of scientific research has not yet penetrated to many of these.”

“Ever since , writers eager to drive the lesson home have urged us to abandon all sentimental egoism, and to see ourselves objectively in the true perspective of time and space. What precisely does this mean? In a full 'main feature' film, recapitulating faithfully the complete history of the universe, the rise of human beings from the first beginnings of man to the achievements of the twentieth century would flash by in a single second. Alternatively, if we decided to examine the universe objectively in the sense of paying equal attention to portions of equal mass, this would result in a lifelong preoccupation with interstellar dust, relieved only at brief intervals by a survey of incandescent masses of hydrogen — not in a thousand million lifetimes would the turn come to give man even a second's notice. It goes without saying that no one — scientists included — looks at the universe in this way, whatever lip-service is given to 'objectivity.'”