The prevalence of suicide, without doubt, is a test of height in civilization; it means that the population is winding up its nervous and intellectual system to the utmost point of tension and that sometimes it snaps.

What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.

The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.

The relation of the individual person to the species he belongs to is the most intimate of all relations.

Liberty is always unfinished business

Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy.

There has never been any country at every moment so virtuous and so wise that it has not sometimes needed to be saved from itself.