One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

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

When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art: It arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement. Philosophy is a hypothetical interpretation of the unknown (as in metaphysics), or of the inexactly known (as in ethics or political philosophy). It is the front trench in the siege of truth. Science is the captured territory, and behind it are those secure regions in which knowledge and art build our imperfect and marvelous world. Philosophy seems to stand still, perplexed, but only because she leaves the fruits of victory to her daughters the sciences, and herself passes on, divinely discontent, to the uncertain and unexplored.