The crossroads of trade are the meeting place of ideas, the attrition ground of rival customs and beliefs; diversities beget conflict, comparison, thought; superstitions cancel one another, and reason begins.

The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions.

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

Education is the transformation of civilisation

There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present.

Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it.

Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.