Quotes on Polymaths

When you compare yourself with others in matters of wealth, position, and health, you should look at people less favoured than yourself. When you compare yourself with others in matters of religion, knowledge and virtue, look at people who are better than yourself.

The amount of knowledge which we can justify from evidence directly available to us can never be large. The overwhelming proportion of our factual beliefs continue therefore to be held at second hand through trusting others, and in the great majority of cases our trust is placed in the authority of comparatively few people of widely acknowledged standing.

We ought not to be embarrassed of appreciating the truth and of obtaining it wherever it comes from, even if it comes from races distant and nations different from us. Nothing should be dearer to the seeker of truth than the truth itself, and there is no deterioration of the truth, nor belittling either of one who speaks it or conveys it

A well-spent day brings happy sleep.

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

The true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions we uncover the laws of truth.

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

Women are not allowed to be polymaths; we're only allowed to do single maths.

Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.

The 'polymath' had already died out by the close of the eighteenth century, and in the following century intensive education replaced extensive, so that by the end of it the specialist had evolved. The consequence is that today everyone is a mere technician, even the artist.

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.