The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual.

With a tear for the dark past, turn we then to the dazzling future, and, veiling our eyes, press forward. The long and weary winter of the race is ended. Its summer has begun. Humanity has burst the chrysalis. The heavens are before it.

Is a man satisfied, merely because he is perfumed himself, to mingle with a malodorous crowd?

I first saw the light in the city of Boston in the year 1857.

Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. The idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a yet better illustration of the career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos.

No republic can long exist unless a substantial equality in the wealth of citizens prevails.

Competition, which is the instinct of selfishness, is another word for dissipation of energy, while combination is the secret of efficient production.