We ought not to endeavor to revise history according to our latter day notions of what things ought to have been, or upon the theory that the past is simply a reflection of the present

The decay of old aristocratic prejudices against greedy speculation, the undermining of orthodox Christian faith (which forbids avarice)... the debauching of agriculture to a gross money-getting concern: these particular aspects of a vast and voracious concentration upon profits are so many illustrations of our sinning confusion of values.

Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery.

...so mankind is now trapped by the failure of its energies and by the depletion of those natural resources that men have plundered wantonly.

Life is for action, and if we desire to know anything, we must make up our minds to be ignorant about much.

...only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside.

Rousseau and his disciples were resolved to force men to be free; in most of the world, they triumphed; men are set free from family, church, town, class, guild; yet they wear, instead, the chains of the state, and they expire of ennui or stifling lone lines.