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

If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.

Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.

For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with. It must be either new in itself or invested with some novelty of application to the new world of new times. Knowledge does not keep any better than fish. You may be dealing with knowledge of the old species, with some old truth; but somehow it must come to the students, as it were, just drawn out of the sea and with the freshness of its immediate importance.

The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.

The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.

Education which is not modern share the fate of all organic things which are kept too long.