History is a strange experience. The world is quite small now; but history is large and deep. Sometimes you can go much farther by sitting in your own home and reading a book of history, than by getting onto a ship or an airplane and traveling a thousand miles.

What is politics but persuading the public to vote for this and support that and endure these for the promise of those?

A period of high civilization is one in which thoughts fly freely from mind to mind, from one country to another-yes, from the past into the present.

Bad teaching wastes a great deal of effort, and spoils many lives which might have been full of energy and happiness.

At certain times and in certain schools it is orthodox to be a rebel; and in general it is a very poor class that does not contain at least three pupils who can be counted on to oppose the teachers authority and loudly and persistently to question everything he says.

You [the teacher] do not merely insert a lot of facts, if you teach them [the students] properly. It is not like injecting 500 cc. of serum, or administering a year's dose of vitamins.

The Sonnets of Shakespeare have the fascination of an autobiography, without its clarity. It is like reading an important document in a cave by the light of matches which keep blowing out.