The only use of knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.

The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.

The difference between ancients and moderns is that the ancients asked what have we experienced, and moderns asked what can we experience.

As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.

Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration. We must not expect, however, all the virtues.

Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications.

Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.