The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught.

No historian can take part with--or against--the forces he has to study. To him even the extinction of the human race should merely be a fact to be grouped with other vital statistics.

A boy's will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame.

The President may indeed in one respect resemble the commander of an army in peace, but in another and more essential sense he resembles the commander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek. He must sooner or later be convinced that a perpetual calm is as little to his purpose as a perpetual hurricane, and that without headway the ship can arrive nowhere.

Chaos breeds life; Order creates habit.

Artists... disappeared long ago as social forces. So did the church.

As history stands, it is a sort of Chinese play, without end andl without lesson. With these impressions I wrote the last line of my History, asking for a round century before going further.