Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality; it tends to over-government in point of quantity.

The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm.

Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

The real essence of work is concentrated energy - people who really have that in a superior degree by nature are independent of the forms and habits and artifices by which less able and less active people are kept up to their labors.

Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.