“Perhaps our national ambition to standardize ourselves has behind it the notion that democracy means standardization. But standardization is the surest way to destroy the initiative.”

We are a commercial people. We cannot boast of our arts, our crafts, our cultivation; our boast is in the wealth we produce.

My whole theory for the improvement of society is based on a belief in the discipline and the education of the individual to self-control and right doing, for the sake of right doing.

In walking through the world there is a choice for a man to make.

No value is destroyed for you – only for the original owner.

Ripe old age, cheerful, useful, and understanding, is one of the finest influences in the world.

One of our gravest mistakes is persuading ourselves that nobody has passed this way before.

A popular disturbance never remains long in the full control of those who start it.

A mind which really lays hold of a subject is not easily detached from it.

There is no more effective medicine to apply to feverish public sentiments than figures.

A mind truly cultivated never feels that the intellectual process is complete until it can reproduce in some media the thing which it has absorbed.

It’s always a revolution, you know, when things occur of which you have never happened to hear!

Were it alone in these methods, public scorn would long ago have made short work of the Standard Oil Company. But it is simply the most conspicuous type of what can be done by these practices.

We have held that a death toll was a necessary part of every human achievement, whether sport, war or industry. A moment’s rage over the horror of it, and we have sunk into indifference.

The only reason I am glad I am a woman is because I will not have to marry one.

One of the most depressing features of the ethical side of the matter is that instead of such methods arousing contempt they are more or less openly admired. And this is logical.

The whole force of the respectable circles to which I belonged, that respectable circle which knew as I did not the value of security won, the slender chance of replacing it if lost or abandoned, was against me.

If you’re disciplined enough, you don’t get down when you’re behind, and you have a chance to create something positive.

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

I’m very competitive by nature. And I like to be the underdog – It’s the best way to win. To come from behind and win is a great feeling!

You can tell the strength of a nation by the women behind its men.

I’m learning without having to be behind a desk, so it’s a pretty cool place to be.

Great nations are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes.

The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.

See, behind all my tough, rough exterior is basically a marshmallow, maybe a pussycat. But not a wimp!