Cultural creation... begins where chaos and insecurity end.

If you wish to be loved, be modest; if you wish to be admired, be proud; if you wish both, combine external modesty with internal pride.

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

We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last twenty-four hours; we are the not the best informed as the events of the last sixty centuries.

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

by and large the poor have the same impulses as the rich, with only less opportunity or skill to implement them

History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness.