What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.

You may not divide the seamless coat of learning.

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

Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment.

The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth-while.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.