Man is a luxury loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, read more

Man is a luxury loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

Society is like a large piece of frozen water; and skating well
is the great art of social life.

Society is like a large piece of frozen water; and skating well
is the great art of social life.

Curiosity killed the cat, but for awhile I was a suspect.

Curiosity killed the cat, but for awhile I was a suspect.

Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the read more

Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it.

There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it.

The ideal of self-advancement which the civilizing west offers to backward populations brings with it the plague of individual frustration. read more

The ideal of self-advancement which the civilizing west offers to backward populations brings with it the plague of individual frustration. All the advantages brought by the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing anonymity of communal existence.

The methods of the natural sciences cannot be applied to human behavior because this behavior...lacks the peculiarity that characterizes events read more

The methods of the natural sciences cannot be applied to human behavior because this behavior...lacks the peculiarity that characterizes events in the field of the natural sciences, viz., regularity.