Truth emerges from the clash of adverse ideas.

No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.

The great creative individual . . . is capable of more wisdom and virtue than collective man ever can be.

The triumph of the Confederacy... would be a victory for the powers of evil which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the sprits of its friends all over the civilized world... [The American Civil War] is destined to be a turning point, for good or evil, of the course of human affairs.

The object of universities is not to make skillful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings

The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.

The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it.