People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

PICKERING : Have you no morals, man?

Political Economy and Social Economy are amusing intellectual games; but Vital Economy is the Philosopher Stone.

Polygamy, when tried under modern democratic conditions, as by the Mormons, is wrecked by the revolt of the mass of inferior men who are condemned to celibacy by it; for the maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first rate man to the exclusive possession of a third rate one. Polyandry has not been tried under these conditions.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Property, said Proudhon, is theft. This is the only perfect truism that has been uttered on the subject.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.