Clergyman's

There is … no first person plural to the verb ""cogito."" Observation, verification, and inference are functions which are perfected only in their independent individual exercise. I am not unmindful of the importance of the corroboration of one mind by another; but such corroboration is valuable only in so far as both minds have reached their results alone. Corroboration implies the absence of collusion. The devotee of the intellect must, then, have the strength to work alone.
- Ralph Barton Perry

Indeed I am inclined to go so far as to say that the one cause for which one may properly make war is the cause of peace.
- Ralph Barton Perry

The English mind is intelligent rather than intellectual. The French are intellectual in the sense that the intellect is emancipated and left free to run its own course.
- Ralph Barton Perry

There is the growth of applied science, the increased interest in the control and reconstruction of nature, accompanied by a decline in the practice of meditation or the vocation of the intellectual life.
- Ralph Barton Perry

I have little interest in the ""conscientious objector""; but I have the greatest regard for the individual thinker. The former opposes private conviction to public policy. His inflexibility is symptomatic of will and emotion, rather than enlightenment. The latter opposes freedom of thought to uniformity of opinion.
- Ralph Barton Perry