How much time I wasted in exploring a medley of foolish cults and a diversity of fantastic beliefs! But I did this so as to ensure intellectual integrity and emotional tolerance against any suspicion of partisanship or negligence in the search after truth. Truths do not stop being true because they are introduced into false systems. The contact is certainly unnatural. Nevertheless, it cannot alter their character or deprive them of their value. We may accept a part of these systems without having to accept all of them. We must disentangle what is worth such acceptance from what is not. Most of those which I investigated had more or less good in them but there was enough of the bad, the unsound, or the unworthy to render it undesirable to stay long with any of them.
-- Notebooks Category 12: Reflections > Chapter 5 : The Literary Work > # 156
