Every general increase of freedom is accompanied by some degeneracy, attributable to the same causes as the freedom.

When we hate a person, with an intimate, imaginative, human hatred, we enter into his mind, or sympathize -- any strong interest will arouse the imagination and create some sort of sympathy.

Prudence and compromise are necessary means, but every man should have an impudent end which he will not compromise.

Could anything be more indicative of a slight but general insanity than the aspect of the crowd on the streets of Chicago?

It is surely a matter of common observation that a man who knows no one thing intimately has no views worth hearing on things in general. The farmer philosophizes in terms of crops, soils, markets, and implements, the mechanic generalizes his experiences of wood and iron, the seaman reaches similar conclusions by his own special road; and if the scholar keeps pace with these it must be by an equally virile productivity.

The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self.

Institutions - government, churches, industries, and the like - have properly no other function than to contribute to human freedom; and in so far as they fail, on the whole, to perform this function, they are wrong and need reconstruction.