10 Quotes & Sayings By Nicholas Murray Butler

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) was an American educator, historian, and philosopher. He served as President of Columbia University from 1915 until his retirement in 1939. He is also the namesake of the Nicholas Murray Butler School of Law at New York University, which merged with New York Law School to become Baruch College in 2002.

An expert is one who knows more and more about...
1
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing. Nicholas Murray Butler
2
The analytical geometry of Descartes and the calculus of Newton and Leibniz have expanded into the marvelous mathematical method–more daring than anything that the history of philosophy records–of Lobachevsky and Riemann, Gauss and Sylvester. Indeed, mathematics, the indispensable tool of the sciences, defying the senses to follow its splendid flights, is demonstrating today, as it never has been demonstrated before, the supremacy of the pure reason. Nicholas Murray Butler
3
A degenerate nobleman or one that is proud of his birth is like a turnip. There is nothing good of him but that which is underground. Nicholas Murray Butler
4
Optimism is the foundation of courage. Nicholas Murray Butler
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Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and of true progress. Nicholas Murray Butler
6
To swallow gudgeons ere they're catch'd And count their chickens ere they're hatch'd. Nicholas Murray Butler
7
The forty-four-hour week has no charm for me. I'm looking for a forty-hour day. Nicholas Murray Butler
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Optimism is essential to achievement and is also the foundation of courage and of true progress. Nicholas Murray Butler
9
This was the penn'worth of his thought. Nicholas Murray Butler