Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

Progress of mankind is progress of mind and intellect.

Private passions tire and exhaust themselves, public ones never.

Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence.

Human history is in essence a history of ideas.

Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.

The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.

Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.

Though I love my country, I do not love my countrymen.

A narrow mind and a fat head invariably come on the same person.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

The U.S. Census Bureau acknowledged this fact when it reported that those with a bachelor's degree earn on average $1 million more over their lifetime than those with only a high school diploma.

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.

A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats.

A person's a person, no matter how small.

That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.

Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

Human nature is not totally fixed, but on any realistic scale, evolutionary processes are much too slow to affect it.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.