The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; if is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment from which forms the secret of civilization.

It is the wind and the rain, O God, the cold and the storm that make this earth of yours to blossom and bear its fruit. So in our lives it is storm and stress and hurt and suffering that make real men and women bring the world's work to its highest perfection.

Herein lies the tragedy of the age: Not that men are poor, - all men know something of poverty. Not that men are wicked, - who is good? Not that men are ignorant, - what is truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.

Half the Christian churches of New York are trying to ruin the free public schools in order to replace them by religious dogma.

For education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent.

Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a black man of crime.

Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done.