The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

The demand that I must not think what I think has never, in the whole of history, made a man think differently. It has only made him pretend to.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats.

It is not so much that man is a herd animal, but that he is a horde animal, a being of a warrior horde; he is led by a chief and his horde shares a common life. The striking fact about this is the extraordinary ease with which a man identifies himself with a group.

The chief danger of our age is that all mankind should be sunk in a depression of the same kind, all held in the same mold by the oppressiveness of a system of thought in which there is neither criticism of life nor xiety about truth.