“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”

“When all think alike, then no one is thinking.”

“Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character. We extend this into all our thinking. Between us and the realities of social life we build up a mass of generalizations, abstract ideas, ancient glories, and personal wishes. They simplify and soften experience. It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor, to argue the rights of capital than to see its results. Pretty soon we come to think of the theories and abstract ideas as things in themselves. We worry about their fate and forget their original content.”

“These various remedies, eugenic, educational, ethical, populist and socialist, all assume that either the voters are inherently competent to direct the course of affairs or that they are making progress towards such an ideal. I think [democracy] is a false ideal.”

“Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.”

“There is an ascendant feeling among the people that all achievement should be measured in human happiness.”

“All men desire their own perfect adjustment, but they desire it, being finite men, on their own terms.”