Wisdom is meaningless until your own experience has given it meaning, and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.

The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical. . . . Any man who for one moment abandons or suspends the questioning spirit has for that moment betrayed humanity.

Authors are magpies, echoing each other's words and seizing avidly on anything that glitters.

We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Speech is highly elliptical. It would scarcely be endurable otherwise. Ellipsis is indispensable to the writer or speaker who wants to be brief and pithy, but it can easily cause confusion and obscurity and must be used with skill.

Legislators who are of even average intelligence stand out among their colleagues. . . . A cultured college president has become as much a rarity as a literate newspaper publisher. A financier interested in economics is as exceptional as a labor leader interested in the labor movement. For the most part our leaders are merely following out in front; they [only] marshal us in the way that we are going.

The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.