"Slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood...." - Quote by Leonardo Da Vinci

“The young man should first learn perspective, then the proportions of objects. Next, copy work after the hand of a good master, to gain the habit of drawing parts of the body well; and then to work from nature, to confirm the lessons learned.”

“Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.”

“O speculators about perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you created in the like quest? Go and take your place with the seekers after gold.”

“Nonsense is nonsense whether it rhymes or not, just as bad half-pennies are good for nothing whether they jingle or lie quiet.”

“Treat your friends for what you know them to be. Regard no surfaces. Consider not what they did, but what they intended.”

“I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.”

“The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.”

“Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.”

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant.”