It is a great mistake to think that the motive which leads a man of science to his work is the desire for practical application. He is moved chiefly by curiosity, that most profound, most arrogant, and most invincible of all the passions.

It is not the horse that draws the cart, but the oats. And yet we spend our lives praising the horse and forgetting to plant the field.

It is not the horse that draws the cart, but the oats. And yet we speak of the horse as the cause of motion, and the oats as mere fuel. So we misread almost every force that moves us.

It is not the horse that draws the cart, but the oats. And yet we always speak of the man who does the work, and forget the man who makes it possible for him to do it.

It is not the horse that draws the cart, but the oats. And yet we always speak of the horse.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and are angered by their absence and impatient of delay in their arrival. It is the absence of the phenomena, not their presence, which is the true cause of the intellectual excitement we feel.

A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? The appetite grows with eating; the more one has, the more one wants.

The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled. And the worst thing you can do to a talented person is to prevent them from starting fires.

The mind of man is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.

The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate 'apparent' ordinary people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and are anxious until they find them. If the mind were a mere mirror, it might be pleasant for it to reflect the world, but it would have no motive to seek one kind of world rather than another.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and are satisfied by the presence of these phenomena, just as the nutritive instincts are satisfied by food.

The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate 'apparently ordinary' people to unusual effort over many years.

The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate 'apparently ordinary' people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people.