Many peoples’ tombstones should read ‘Died at 30, buried at 60.’
—Nicholas Murray Butler
The youth of today and the youth of tomorrow will be accorded an almost unequaled opportunity for great accomplishment and for human service.
—Nicholas Murray Butler
Topics: Youth
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.
—Nicholas Murray Butler
Topics: Experts
Every attempt, by whatever authority, to fix a maximum of productive labor by a given worker in a given time is an unjust restriction upon his freedom and a limitation of his right to make the most of himself in order that he may rise in the scale of the social and economic order in which he lives. The notion that all human beings born into this world enter at birth into a definite social and economic classification, in which classification they must remain permanently through life, is wholly false and fatal to a progressive civilization.
—Nicholas Murray Butler
Topics: Class, Achievements
Necessity does the work of courage.
—Nicholas Murray Butler
Topics: Necessity, Courage
The history of the building of the American nation may justly be described as a laboratory experiment in understanding and in solving the problems that will confront the world tomorrow.
—Nicholas Murray Butler
Topics: America
Perhaps we should comprehend these things better were it not for the persistence of the superstition that human beings habitually think. There is no more persistent superstition than this.
—Nicholas Murray Butler
Topics: Thought
The epitaphs on tombstones of a great many people should read: Died at thirty, and buried at sixty.
—Nicholas Murray Butler
Topics: Epitaphs
Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress.
—Nicholas Murray Butler
Topics: Accomplishment, Health, Achievement, Enthusiasm, Success, Optimism, Positive Attitudes, Passion, Courage
The forty-four-hour week has no charm for me. I’m looking for a forty-hour day.
—Nicholas Murray Butler
Topics: Time Management, Value of Time
There are five tests of the evidence of education—correctness and precision in the use of the mother tongue; refined and gentle manners, the result of fixed habits of thought and action; sound standards of appreciation of beauty and of worth, and a character based on those standards; power and habit of reflection; efficiency or the power to do.
—Nicholas Murray Butler
Topics: Education
Nothing so good as a university education, nor worse than a university without its education.
—Nicholas Murray Butler
Topics: Education
The analytical geometry of Descartes and the calculus of Newton and Leibniz have expanded into the marvelous mathematical method
—Nicholas Murray Butler
Topics: Mathematics
America is the best half-educated country in the world.
—Nicholas Murray Butler
Topics: America
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Charles Sanders Peirce American Philosopher
- Charles G. Dawes American Diplomat, Politician
- John Dewey American Philosopher
- Mortimer J. Adler American Philosopher, Educator
- Wilhelm von Humboldt German Statesman, Scholar
- Theodore Roosevelt American Head of State
- Jane Addams American Social Reformer
- Geoffrey Chaucer English Poet
- Jiddu Krishnamurti Indian Philosopher
- Plato Ancient Greek Philosopher
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