CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT

All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgements of probabilities, and not on certainties.

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.

Be unselfish. That is the first and final commandment for those who would be useful and happy in their usefulness. If you think of yourself only, you cannot develop because you are choking the source of development, which is spiritual expansion through thought for others.

The efficient man is the man who thinks for himself.

You know that it is only through work that you can achieve anything, either in college or in the world.

Do not expect the world to look bright, if you habitually wear gray-brown glasses.

The destructiveness of war waged on the scale and with the intensity which conscript armies, the new means of transportation and communication, the new artillery, the aeroplanes, the high explosives, and the continuity of the fighting on battle fronts of unexampled length, by night as well as by day, and in stormy and wintry as well as moderate weather, make possible, has proved to be beyond all power of computation, and could not have been imagined in advance. Never before has there been any approach to the vast killing and crippling of men, the destruction of all sorts of man's structures—buildings, bridges, viaducts, vessels, and docks—and the physical ruin of countless women and children.

We have not entire faith in the trust that Congress has in the unchangeableness of the laws of arithmetic. We might think that their competency to select a professor of history might be doubted. They seem to have an impression that there is such a thing as" American" political economy, which can no more be than "American" chemistry or "American" physics. Finally, gentlemen, we should a little distrust the selection by Congress of a professor of ethics. Of course, we should feel no doubt in regard to the tenure of office of the professors being entirely suitable, it being the well-known practice of both branches of Congress to select men solely for fitness, without regard to locality, and to keep them in office as long as they are competent and faithful.

Carrier of news and knowledge. Instrument of trade and industry. Promoter of mutual acquaintance. Of peace and goodwill among men and nations.

The strikebreaker is the hero of American industry.

For citizens to always be ready to defend and to maintain American ideals of public justice and liberty would add to the self respect of the people. It will teach the people to think of their government as a unified and exalted power for good in the world—humane, unselfish, and aspiring.

Do not underestimate the importance of Islam on the continent of Africa.

The United States naval and military academies are not referred to … because access to them is not free. A thoroughly vicious system of selecting the candidates for admission to these schools annuls the influence they might otherwise exert upon technical education in this country. A patron, and not a good previous training, being the essential requisite

No people ever sees clearly those steps in its own progress, those events in its own life, which future generations will count glorious.

These five contributions to civilization--peace-keeping, religious toleration, the development of manhood suffrage, the welcoming of newcomers, and the diffusion of well-being--I hold to have been eminently characteristic of our country, and so important that …, they will ever be held in the grateful remembrance of mankind.

Every American policy now should be generous as well as just.

The Government of the United States has always maintained that it would not intervene forcibly in the domestic affairs of the Central and South American Republics, and particularly of the island republics in the Caribbean Sea. Nevertheless, both the preceding national Administration and the present have felt no difficulty in using the army and navy of the United States for armed intervention in the affairs of some of those republics; and neither of the two great political parties in the United States has thus far shown any disposition to make an issue with either Administration on this subject.

The combatants on the two sides fought with equal skill and spirit. The North prevailed, because it had more men and more military and industrial resources, and because it was fighting for Union and against slavery.

Military success against autocratic governments and their selfish and cruel policies of conquest became the one object of the whole people, no matter at what cost.

If I had the opportunity to say a fine word to all the young people of America, it would be this: Don't think too much about yourselves. Try to cultivate the habit of thinking of others; this will reward you. Nourish your minds by good reading, constant reading. Discover what your lifework is, work in which you can do most good, in which you can be happiest. Be unafraid in all things when you know you are in the right.

The fruit of liberal education is not learning, but the capacity and desire to learn, not knowledge, but power.

The best way to secure future happiness is to be as happy as is rightfully possible to-day.

I have a conviction that a few weeks spent in a well organized summer camp may be of more value educationally than a whole year of formal school work.

Let us remember that the times which future generations delight to recall are not those of ease and prosperity, but those of adversity bravely borne.

Nobody has any right to find life uninteresting or unrewarding who sees within the sphere of his own activity a wrong he can help to remedy, or within himself an evil he can hope to overcome.