Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

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

We have conferred a mystic popularity upon officials whose only virtue is their timidity; while our scorn of rebels and reformers is so great that we have ceased to persecute them. The capitals and governments of the world are in the hands of caution; and change comes over them only in the night, unseen.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.

If I were rich I would have many books, and I would pamper myself with bindings bright to the eye and soft to the touch, paper generously opaque, and type such as men designed when printing was very young. I would dress my gods in leather and gold, and burn candles of worship before them at night, and string their names like beads on a string.

No man who is in a hurry is quite civilized.

History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice.