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 importance of an individual thinker owes something to chance. For it depends upon the fate of his ideas in the minds of his successors.

The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen; times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals.

We think of the number "five" as applying to appropriate groups of any entities whatsoever - to five fishes, five children, five apples, five days... We are merely thinking of those relationships between those two groups which are entirely independent of the individual essences of any of the members of either group. This is a very remarkable feat of abstraction; and it must have taken ages for the human race to rise to it

You think the world is what it looks like in fine weather at noon day; I think it is what it seems like in the early morning when one first wakes from deep sleep.

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

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