In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.

Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

Mechanizing man's work had changed but not lighted his toil.

It must be granted that in every syllogism, considered as an argument to prove the conclusion, there is a petitio principii. When we say, All men are mortal Socrates is a man therefore Socrates is mortal; it is unanswerably urged by the adversaries of the syllogistic theory, that the proposition, Socrates is mortal.

There is a tolerably general agreement about what a university is not. It is not a place of professional education.