Socrates gave no diplomas or degrees, and would have subjected any disciple who demanded one to a disconcerting catechism on the nature of true knowledge.

If the French noblesse had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their chateaux would never have been burnt.

We never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy.

Since history has no properly scientific value, its only purpose is educative. And if historians neglect to educate the public, if they fail to interest it intelligently in the past, then all their historical learning is valueless except in so far as it educates themselves.

The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses.

Before modern times there was Walking, but not the perfection of Walking, because there was no tea.

The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow.