Mere facts are worthless except through their interpretation, and the past has no value except as our roots and our illumination.

Science and philosophy, in the medieval West, had to grow up in such an atmosphere of myth, legend, miracle, omens, demons, prodigies, magic, astrology, divination, and sorcery as comes only in ages of chaos and fear.

Doubt, however honest, cannot take the place of belief.

Feudal war differed from both ancient and modern war in greater frequency and less mortality and cost.

There is no telling what some future Copernicus will do to our present Ptolemies.

It is pleasant to contemplate the imperfections of our neighbors and the despicable inferiority of the world as compared with our dreams.

One can never tell in what tense man's gratitude is felt.

The virtues of a saint may be the ruin of a ruler.

Rome itself had only two large factories—a paper mill and a dyeing establishment; probably neither meals nor fuels were at hand in quantity, and the profits of politics seemed more honorable than the proceeds of industry.

Where all is ornament the eye and soul grow weary even of beauty and skill.

Men were no better in the Age of Faith than in our age of doubt, and in all ages law and morality have barely succeeded in maintaining social order against the innate individualism of men never intended by nature to be law-abiding citizens.

Men begin by seeking happiness and are content at last with peace.

The law of every being is self-development; no ambition, no empire, is ever content.

Nothing is lost in history: sooner or later every creative idea finds opportunity and development, and adds its color to the flame of life.

In a developed civilization nothing can equal the free man's varying wage, salary, or profit as an economic stimulus. Slave labor pays only when slaves are abundant and cheap.

No great nation is ever conquered until it has destroyed itself.

But for the abundance and cheapness of slaves Archimedes might have been the head of a veritable Industrial Revolution.

In every epoch something is decaying and something is growing.

No religion can hope to win and move the common soul unless it clothes its moral doctrine in a splendor of marvel, legend, and ritual.

In all intellectual ages education stresses knowledge more than character, and produces masses of half-educated people who, uprooted from labor and the land, move about in unplaced discontent like loosened cargo in the ship of state.