This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation.
Interpretation
True enjoyment comes from having earned knowledge through careful investigation.
This quote emphasizes that the feeling of power derived from knowledge is the greatest pleasure, but this power must be anchored in true beliefs that are the result of thorough exploration and inquiry. It suggests that genuine understanding and wisdom emerge from a diligent and honest search for truth.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a philosophy class to ignite discussion about the nature of knowledge.
The aim of scientific thought, then, is to apply past experience to new circumstances; the instrument is an observed uniformity in the course of events. By the use of this instrument it gives us information transcending our experience, it enables us to infer things that we have not seen from things that we have seen; and the evidence for the truth of that information depends on our supposing that the uniformity holds good beyond our experience.
Remember that [scientific thought] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.
Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. A awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live.
We may always depend on it that algebra, which cannot be translated into good English and sound common sense, is bad algebra.
It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
Talent! There's no such thing as talent. What they call talent is nothing but the capacity for doing continuous hard work in the right way.
And which I take notice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it, who cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them, because they see and covet something that he has not given them. All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.
The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.
Your mind must become one, do not try to understand with your ears but with your heart. Indeed, not with your heart but with your soul.
A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.
[In developing your potential] ... I don't develop; I am
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