Has not the experience of two centuries shown that gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice? Is there an instance, in the history of the world, where slaves have been educated for freedom by their task-masters?

Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.

Should at that moment the full moon Step forth upon the hill, And memories hard to bear at noon, By moonlight harder still, Form in the shadows of the trees, - Things that you could not spare And live, or so you thought, yet these All gone, and you still there, A man no longer what he was, Not yet the thing he planned.

We have no higher life that is really apart from other people. It is by imagining them that our personality is built up; to be without the power of imagining them is to be a low-grade idiot.

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.

Any story that you tell about yourself causes suffering. There is no authentic story.