“The despotism of custom is everywhere standing up to human advancement.”

“A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment...”

“No single characteristic ever overtakes an entire society.”

“The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.”

“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossi...”

“Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these indivi...”

“There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”

“Society is now one polished horde Formed of two mighty tribes the Bores and Bored.”

“There’s just as much money to be made in the wreck of a civilization as in the upbuilding of one.”

“Sometimes to return is a vulgarity.”

“I saw my real gods . . the gods of most men. Food, drink, and security in conformity.”