'Rugged individualism' has meant all the 'individualism' for the masters, while the people are regimented into a slave caste to serve a handful of self-seeking 'supermen.' America is perhaps the best representative of this kind of individualism, in whose name political tyranny and social oppression are defended and held up as virtues; while every aspiration and attempt of man to gain freedom and social opportunity to live is denounced as 'un-American' and evil in the name of that same individuality.

What is generally regarded as success - acquisition of wealth, the capture of power or social prestige - I consider the most dismal failures. I hold when it is said of a man that he has arrived, it means that he is finished - his development has stopped at that point.

... the modern drama, operating through the double channel of dramatist and interpreter, affecting as it does both mind and heart,is the strongest force in developing social discontent, swelling the powerful tide of unrest that sweeps onward and over the dam of ignorance, prejudice, and superstition.

The individual is the true reality of life. A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State, nor for that abstraction called "society," or the "nation," which is only a collection of individuals.

Mankind has been punished long and heavily for having created its gods; nothing but pain and persecution have been man's lot since gods began.

Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.

We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America.