“I feel the gods are pretty dead, though I suppose I ought to know that however, to be somewhat more philosophical in the matter, if atheism means simply not being a theist, then of course I’m an atheist.”

I believe that the school must represent life – life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the playground.

The conception that growth and progress are just approximations to a final unchanging goal is the last infirmity of the mind in its transition from a static to a dynamic understanding of life.

The ultimate function of literature is to appreciate the world, sometimes indignantly, sometimes sorrowfully, but best of all to praise when it is luckily possible.

Art is the most effective mode of communications that exists.

The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.

Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.

To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.

In object lessons in elementary education and in laboratory instruction in higher education, the subject is often so treated that the student fails to see the forest on account of the trees.

The goal of education is to enable individuals to continue their education.

A problem well put is half solved.

In a sense the mind of savage peoples is an effect, rather than a cause, of their backward institutions.

We only think when confronted with a problem.

Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.

Hear you don’t believe I know enough to hold office. I wish you to understand that I am thinking about something or other most of the time.

There’s all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something.