God must hate common people, because he made them so common.

Ignorance is not bliss — it is oblivion. Determined ignorance is the hastiest kind of oblivion.

There is no advance without strife.

In Western society, and particularly in American society, imagination is stulified from infancy. The imaginative child is discouraged and upbraided. He is told that the process is mere dreaming, that it wastes time and leads nowhere. It is said to be "impractical." As the child grows and its imagination inevitably leads it to express unconventional ideas and to try new behavior, it is chided and even viciously punished for such signs of unorthodoxy.

The first gold star a child gets in school for the mere performance of a needful task is its first lesson in graft.

Material blessings, when they pay beyond the category of need, are weirdly fruitful of headache.

Common man has at long last got himself so far out of gear with nature and his environment that he is beginning to see the shape of extinction, whether he recognizes it as such or not.