We have learned that history is something that takes no notice whatever of our expectations.

The mathematic, then, is an art. As such it has its styles and style periods. It is not, as the layman and the philosopher (who is in this matter a layman too) imagine, substantially unalterable, but subject like every art to unnoticed changes form epoch to epoch. The development of the great arts ought never to be treated without an (assuredly not unprofitable) side-glance at contemporary mathematics.

Peace is a desire, war is a fact; and history has never paid heed to human desires and ideals.

The last man of the world-city no longer wants to live--he may cling to life as an individual, but as a type, as an aggregate, no, for it is a characteristic of this collective existence that it eliminates the terror of death.

We have not chosen this time. We cannot help it if we are born as men of the early winter of full Civilization, instead of on the golden summit of a ripe Culture, in a Phidias or a Mozart time. Everything depends on our seeing our own position, our destiny, clearly, on our realizing that though we may lie to ourselves about it, we cannot evade it. He who does not acknowledge this in his heart, ceases to be counted among the men of his generation, and remains either a simpleton, a charlatan, or a pedant.

One does not reflect on a point of honor - that is already dishonor. To submit to insult, to forget a humiliation, to quail before an enemy - all these are signs of a life become worthless and superfluous.

Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed intellect.