I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute a state. I think we must get rid of slavery or we must get rid of freedom.

Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentimentin mankind; so that the power of a wafer or a drop of wax or gluten to guard a letter, as it flies over sea over land and comes to its address as if a battalion of artillery brought it, I look upon as a fine meter of civilization.

A mob cannot be a permanency: everybody's interest requires that it should not exist, and only justice satisfies all.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

The soul comes from without into the human body, as into a temporary abode, and it goes out of it anew it passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal." "It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again. Nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals... and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some strange new disguise.

The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

If you know you are right, stay the course even though the whole world seems to be against you and everyone you know questions your judgment. When you prevail--and you eventually will if you stick to the job--they will all tell you that they knew all along you could do it.