The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.

Our rate of progress is such that an individual human being, of ordinary length of life, will be called on to face novel situations which find no parallel in his past. The fixed person, for the fixed duties, who, in older societies was such a godsend, in the future will be a public danger.

All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.

From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.

I am sure that one secret of a successful teacher is that he has formulated quite clearly in his mind what the pupil has got to know in precise fashion. He will then cease from half-hearted attempts to worry his pupils with memorizing a lot of irrelevant stuff of inferior importance.

No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.

Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.