I think you have to remember that Americans saw their purpose as so innately good that they could excuse the pain they would inflict on others to carry out those purposes. Because the purposes were so good, they would justify this pain we were inflicting on other people.

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress.

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

There has never been a time in which I have been convinced from within myself that I am alive. You see, I have only such a fugitive awareness of things around me that I always feel they were once real and are now fleeting away. I have a constant longing, my dear sir, to catch a glimpse of things as they may have been before they show themselves to me.

This is a mournful discovery. 1)Those who agree with you are insane 2)Those who do not agree with you are in power.

History will never change because of politics or conquests or theories or wars; that's mere repitition, it's been going on since the beginning of time. History will only change when we are able to use the energy of love, just as we use energy of the wind, the seas, the atom.