What we opprobriously call stupidity, though not an enlivening quality in common society, is nature's favorite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion.

Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

Money is economic power.

Efficiency in an assembly requires a solid mass of steady votes; and these are collected by a deferential attachment to particular men, or by a belief in the principles that those men represent, and they are maintained by fear of those men - by the fear that if you vote against them, you may soon yourself have no vote at all.