Best 23 quotes of Charles William Eliot on MyQuotes

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

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.

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Liberal education develops a sense of right, duty and honor; and more and more in the modern world, large business rests on rectitude and honor as well as on good judgment.

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.

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

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

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

The efficient man is the man who thinks for himself.

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

The Library is the heart of the University.

The most satisfactory thing in all this earthly life is to be able to serve our fellow-beings-first, those who are bound to us by ties of love, then the wider circle of fellow-townsmen, fellow-countrymen, or fellow-men. To be of service is a solid foundation for contentment in this world.

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

The strikebreaker is the hero of American industry.

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

When blocked or defeated in an enterprise I had much at heart, I always turned immediately to another field of work where progress looked possible, biding my time for a chance to resume the obstructed road.