The Chinese have an excellent proverb: "Be modest in speech, but excel in action.

Great knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been well instructed, but still greater knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been neglected.

Knowledge is but an instrument, which the profligate and the flagitious may use as well as the brave and the just.

Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.

It is well, when the wise and the learned discover new truths; but how much better to diffuse the truths already discovered, amongst the multitude! Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power; and while a philosopher is discovering one new truth, millions may be propagated amongst the people. Diffusion, then, rather than discovery, is the duty of our government.

Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen.

Give me a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate!