“The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“The state was made for man, not man for state.”

“When the ax came into the forest the trees said the handle is one of us.”

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