Parents usually educate their children merely in such a manner than however bad the world may be, they may adapt themselves to its present conditions. But they ought to give them an education so much better than this, that a better condition of things may thereby be brought about by the future.

Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

It is often necessary to make a decision on the basis of knowledge sufficient for action but insufficient to satisfy the intellect.

Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.

Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do in order to become acceptable to God is mere superstition and religious folly.

Reason in a creature is a faculty of widening the rules and purposes of the use of all its powers far beyond natural instinct; it acknowledges no limits to its projects. Reason itself does not work instinctively, but requires trial, practice, and instruction in order gradually to progress from one level of insight to another.

The science of mathematics presents the most brilliant example of how pure reason may successfully enlarge its domain without the aid of experience