Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.
You can’t get to a pleasant place to be at unless you use pleasant methods to get there. When you are dealing with a human society the means is fully as important as the end.
I had a vivid imagination. Not only could I put myself in the other person’s place, but I could not avoid doing so. My sympathies always went out to the weak, the suffering, and the poor. Realizing their sorrows I tried to relieve them in order that I myself might be relieved.
I am simply an agnostic. I haven’t yet had time or opportunity to explore the universe, and I don’t know what I might run on to in some nook or corner.
Whenever I hear people discussing birth control, I always remember that I was fifth.
Life is a never-ending school, and the really important lessons all tend to teach humanity our proper relation to the environment where we must live.
In order to have enough freedom, it is necessary to have too much.
The time will come when all people will view with horror light way in which society and its courts of law now take human life; and when that time comes, the way will be clear to device some better method of dealing with poverty and ignorance and their frequent byproducts, which we call crime.
Every thought of pity is like the balm of Gilead to our souls.
A criminal is a person with predatory instincts; but, without sufficient capital to form a corporation.
Some false representations contravene the law; some do not. The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business, and, besides, could not be done. The line between honesty and dishonesty is a narrow, shifting one and usually lets those get by that are the most subtle and already have more than they can use.
I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.
No law was ever made by the people; they are made for the people.
Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man. I’m not worried about my soul.
When they want a working man for anything excepting work they want him for conspiracy.
If every man who passed an unjust judgment on his fellow should be condemned, how many judges would be found so vain and foolish as to review and condemn their Maker’s work?
The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom.
The love of nature comes with maturing years and is one of the few compensations for growing old.
We are marching backwards to the glorious age of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.
Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man will dare espouse an unpopular cause.
The first great cause of crime is poverty, and we will never cure crime until we get rid of poverty.