Truly, there are terrible primal arcana of earth which had better be left unknown and unevoked; dread secrets which have nothing to do with man, and which man may learn only in exchange for peace and sanity; cryptic truths which make the knower evermore an alien among his kind, and cause him to walk alone on earth.
Science ... looks skeptically at all claims to knowledge, old and new. It teaches not blind obedience to those in authority but to vigorous debate, and in many respects that's the secret of its success.
We have all our private terrors, our particular shadows, our secret fears. We are afraid in a fear which we cannot face, which none understands, and our hearts are torn from us, our brains unskinned like the layers of an onion, ourselves the last.
I feel that if I kept it secret it might grow in my mind (as poisonous things grow in the dark) and take its place with the other terrible thoughts that gnaw me
This campaign of non-cooperation has no reference to diplomacy, secret or open. The only diplomacy it admits of is the statement and pursuance of truth at any cost.
But whether I become a believer or remain an agnostic, my belief or disbelief must derive its source from within, not from without. I, myself, must create its symbols. The transcendental is that which produces its own form. I will never discover its secret if I do not find it in my own heart; if I do not possess it already I shall never be able to acquire it.
Poorly secured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, or secrets from a scientist in Pakistan could help build a bomb that detonates in Paris. The poppies in Afghanistan become the heroin in Berlin. The poverty and violence in Somalia breeds the terror of tomorrow.
Really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery -- the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets -- is this: that for every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together.
The great secret of morals is Love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own.