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.

Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

Progress is the domination of chaos by mind and purpose, of matter by form and will. It need not be continuous to be real.

Man is an emotional animal, occasionally rational; and through his feelings he can be deceived to his heart's content.

To seek, beneath the universal strife, the hidden harmony of things.

The individual succumbs, but he does not die if he has left something to mankind.

The victors called the revolution a triumph of liberty; but now and then liberty in the slogans of the strong means freedom from restraint in the exploitation of the weak.