One of the chief uses of religion is that it makes us remember our coming from darkness, the simple fact that we are created.

To do Mohammed justice, his main attack was against the idolatries of Asia. Only he thought, just as the Arians did and just as the Unitarians do, that he could attack them better with a greater approximation to plain theism. What distinguishes his heresy from anything like an Arian or Albigensian heresy is that, as it sprang up on the borders of Christendom, it could spread outwards to a barbaric world.

Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.

History is not a toboggan slide, but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced

Like every book I never wrote, it is by far the best book I have ever written.

Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for cleanliness is made an essential and godliness is regarded as an offence.