Whenever a text-book is written of real educational worth, you may be quite certain that some reviewer will say that it will be difficult to teach from it. Of course it will be difficult to teach from it. It it were easy, the book ought to be burned.

The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue.

The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.

The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operation of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish.

Routine is the god of every social system; it is the seventh heaven of business, the essential component in the success of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. The social machine should run like clockwork.

Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.

You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.