“A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.”

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

Truth allows no choice.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

How small of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

Men who stand in the highest ranks of society seldom hear of their faults; if by any accident an opprobrious clamour reaches their ears, flattery is always at hand to pour in her opiates, to quiet conviction and obtund remorse.

A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.

My dear friend, clear your mind of can’t.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.

What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it; for folly doesn’t deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.

Power is gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent.

The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy.

By the same right under which France took Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, and will sooner or later take Belgium — by that same right Germany takes over Schleswig; it is the right of civilisation as against barbarism, of progress as against stability.

Bare-faced covetousness was the moving spirit of civilization from its first dawn to the present day; wealth, and again wealth, and for the third time wealth; wealth, not of society, but of the puny individual, was its only and final aim.

Wherever we look, the work of the chemist has raised the level of our civilization and has increased the productive capacity of the nation.

We must have no carelessness in our dealings with public property or the expenditure of public money. Such a condition is characteristic either of an undeveloped people, or of a decadent civilization. America is neither.

From the first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization.

Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it.

Their whole life depends on spending money, and now they’ve got none to spend. That’s our civilization and our education: bring up the masses to depend entirely on spending money, and then the money gives out.

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.