When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks very much.

The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force.

A man who has humility will have acquired in the last reaches of his beliefs the saving doubt of his own certainty.

It is all very well to talk about being the captain of your soul. It is hard, and only a few heroes, saints, and geniuses have been the captains of their souls for any extended period of their lives.

Certainly he is not of the generation that regards honesty as the best policy. However, he does regard it as a policy.

There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation.

Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue; it must be the intelligible consequence of it.