So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century.

A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.

Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.

There is no greater hindrance to the progress of thought than an attitude of irritated party-spirit.

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

No science can be more secure than the unconscious metaphysics which tacitly it presupposes.

Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness.