A vast technology has been developed to prevent, reduce, or terminate exhausting labor and physical damage. It is now dedicated to the production of the most trivial conveniences and comfort.

Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything.

A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.

Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?

Each of us has interests which conflict the interests of everybody else... 'everybody else' we call 'society'. It's a powerful opponent and it always wins. Oh, here and there an individual prevails for a while and gets what he wants. Sometimes he storms the culture of a society and changes it to his own advantage. But society wins in the long run, for it has the advantage of numbers and of age.

Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.

We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.