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

Read, think well of mankind, go to our libraries and rejoice.

And last are the few whose delight is in meditation and understanding; who yearn not for goods, nor for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both market and battlefield to lose themselves in the quiet clarity of secluded thought; whose will is a light rather than a fire, whose haven is not power but truth: these are the men of wisdom, who stand aside unused by the world.

It came to me that reform should begin at home, and since that day I have not had time to remake the world.

Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.

Liberty is a product of order.

Does history warrant the conclusion that religion is necessary to morality - that a natural ethic is too weak to withstand the savagery that lurks under civilization and emerges in our dreams, crimes and wars? ... There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.