The resistance to a new idea increases by the square of its importance.

It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather that the hope of creatingfuture dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.

Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful; therefore the worse they are performed, the better.

There is in Aristotle an almost complete absence of what may be called benevolence or philanthropy. The sufferings of mankind . . . there is no evidence that they cause him unhappiness except when the sufferers happen to be his friends.

Into every tidy scheme for arranging the pattern of human life, it is necessary to inject a certain dose of anarchism.

It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.

It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true