But you can catch yourself entertaining habitually certain ideas and setting others aside; and that, I think, is where our personal destinies are largely decided.

Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized.

The learned tradition is not concerned with truth, but with the learned adjustment of learned statements of antecedent learned people.

In England if something goes wrong--say, if one finds a skunk in the garden--he writes to the family solicitor, who proceeds to take the proper measures; whereas in America, you telephone the fire department. Each satisfies a characteristic need; in the English, love of order and legalistic procedure; and here in America, what you like is something vivid, and red, and swift.

Nature, even in the act of satisfying anticipation, often provides a surprise.

Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise

The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.