The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains but in their nerves and vitals.

The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion. They can persuade and can be persuaded by the disclosure of alternatives, the better and the worse. Civilization is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however, unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals. Thus in a live civilization there is always an element of unrest.

It belongs to the self-respect of intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its final unravelment.

It is not paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.

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

There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain.

In every age of well-marked transition, there is the pattern of habitual dumb practice and emotion which is passing and there is oncoming a new complex of habit.