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.

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.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

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

Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.

Knowledge that does not generate achievement is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind.

Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism. When she had overcome them all she flourished for a moment and then began to die.