“if Columbus in an island of America had not caught the disease, which poisons the source of generation, and often indeed prevents generation, we should not have chocolate and cochineal”

“From generation to generation, America should never be the same country.”

“America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.”

“We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start living. Action always generates inspiration, [but] inspiration seldom generates action.”

“We say that Columbus discovered America and Newton discovered gravity, as though America and gravity weren't there until Columbus and Newton got wind of them.”

“Whatever the one generation may learn from the other, that which is genuinely human no generation learns from the foregoing...Thus no generation has learned from another to love, no generation begins at any other point than at the beginning, no generation has a shorter task assigned to it than had the previous generation.”