Quotes from Charles William Eliot

I recognize but one mental acquisition as a necessary part of the education of a lady or gentlemen, namely, an accurate and refined use of the mother tongue.

Philosophy is the thoughts of men about human thinking, reasoning and imagining, and the real values in human existence.

Truth and right are above utility in all realms of thought and action.

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

In the modern world the intelligence of public opinion is the one indispensable condition for social progress.

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

There is no mystery about successful business.... Exclusive attention to the person who is speaking to you.

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

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

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.

Messenger of sympathy and love, Servant of parted friends, Consoler of the lonely, Bond of the scattered family, Enlarger of the common life.

Enter to grow in wisdom.Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.

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

One could get a first-class education from a shelf of books five feet long.

In some small field each child should attain, within the limited range of its experience and observation, the power to draw a justly limited inference from observed facts.