Only people who are assured of daily food can concern themselves with matters of principle and ethic. A man will become a slave rather than starve.

Every event has had its cause, and nothing, not the least wind that blows, is accident or causeless.

Man was lost if he went to a usurer, for the interest ran faster than a tiger upon him.

People on the whole are very simple-minded, in whatever country one finds them. They are so simple as to take literally, more often than no, the things their leaders tell them.

Vermont is a country unto itself.

Too many escape into complexity these days. For it is an escape for persons to cry, when this question of the equality of peoples is raised in India or in our own South, 'Ah, but the situation is not so simple.' ... no great stride forward is ever made for the individual or for the human race unless the complex situation is reduced to one simple question and its simple answer.

Men of action," whose minds are too busy with the day's work to see beyond it. They are essential men, we cannot do without them, and yet we must not allow all our vision to be bound by the limitations of "men of action.