Rome is the one great spiritual organisation which is able to resist and must, as a matter of life and death, the progress of science and modern civilization

I know of no department of natural science more likely to reward a man who goes into it thoroughly than anthropology. There is an immense deal to be done in the science pure and simple, and it is one of those branches of inquiry which brings one into contact with the great problems of humanity in every direction.

Only one absolute certainty is possible to man, namely that at any given moment the feeling which he has exists.

It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodeling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the direction of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.

Living things have no inertia, and tend to no equilibrium.

The very existence of society depends on the fact that every member of it tacitly admits he is not the exclusive possessor of himself, and that he admits the claim of the polity of which he forms a part, to act, to some extent, as his master.

I wish you would let an old man, who has had his share of fighting, remind you that battles, like hypotheses, are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.