From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.

A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.

In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry; in its decadence, philosophy and logic.

Science without philosophy, facts without perspective and valuation, cannot save us from havoc and despair. Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.

[H]istory assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely.