Is it a misfortune that magnificent California was seized from the lazy Mexicans who did not know what to do with it.

The existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery.

The English Established Church... will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income.

Men's ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.

The essence of the free press is the reliable, reasonable and moral nature of freedom.

The most interesting acquaintanceship I have struck up here is that of Colonel Lapinski. He is without doubt the cleverest Pole - besides being an homme d'action [man of action] - that I have ever met. His sympathies are all on the German side, though in manners and speech he is also a Frenchman. He cares nothing for the struggle of nationalities and only knows the racial struggle. He hates all Orientals, among whom he numbers Russians Turks, Greeks, Armenians, etc., with equal impartiality.... His aim now is to raise a German legion in London.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.