A society in stable equilibrium is-by definition-one that has no history and wants no historians.

The proof that a philosopher does not know what he is talking about is apt to sadden his followers before it reacts on himself.

[Adams] supposed that, except musicians, everyone thought Beethoven a bore, as every one except mathematicians thought mathematics a bore.

We shall some day catch an abstract truth by the tail, and then we shall have our religion and our immortality.

Mr Jefferson meant that the American system should be a democracy, and he would rather have let the whole world perish than that this principle, which to him represented all that man was worth, should fail. Mr Hamilton considered democracy a fatal curse, and meant to stop its progress.

If one shed tears, they must be shed on one's pillow.

The Jewish question is really the most serious of our problems.