We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.

If we are bound to improve, we need not trouble to improve. The pure doctrine of progress is the best of all reasons for not being a progressive.

I like the Americans for a great many reasons. I like them because even the modern thing called industrialism has not entirely destroyed in them the very ancient thing called democracy. I like them because they have a respect for work which really curbs the human tendency to snobbishness.

The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It consists simply of confusing the necessary conditions of life with the normal preoccupations of life, that are quite a different thing.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.

A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.