(Five) thinkers since Galileo, each informing his successor of what discoveries his own lifetime had seen achieved, might have passed the torch of science into our hands as we sit here in this room. Indeed, for the matter of that, an audience much smaller than the present one, an audience of some 5 or 6 score people, if each person in it could speak for his own generation, would carry us away to the black unknown of the human species, to days without a document or monument to tell their tale.

Truth is something that happens to an idea.

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old.