The victors called the revolution a triumph of liberty; but now and then liberty in the slogans of the strong means freedom from restraint in the exploitation of the weak.

From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.

Man is an emotional animal, occasionally rational; and through his feelings he can be deceived to his heart's content.

The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.

We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive redistribution.

If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children.

In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry; in its decadence, philosophy and logic.