Society and the World

There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.

There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.

A slave has but one master; an ambitious man has as many masters as there are people who may be useful in bettering his position.

Ambition is the subtlest beast of the intellectual and moral field. It is wonderfully adroit in concealing itself from its owner.

Of all crimes that human creatures are capable of committing, the most horrid and unnatural is ingratitude, especially when it is committed against parents.

Too great haste in paying off an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.

Most people return small favors, acknowledge middling ones, and repay great ones with ingratitude.

Ingratitude is surely the chief of the intellectual sins of man.

What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.

If a life can have a theme song, and I believe every worthwhile one has, mine is a religion, an obsession, or a mania or all of these expressed in one word: individualism.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.

I took the road less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.

Those who have never been ill are incapable of real sympathy for a great many misfortunes.

There is no darkness but ignorance.

Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal.

Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal.

Ignorance is not a simple lack of knowledge but an active aversion to knowledge, the refusal to know, issuing from cowardice, pride, or laziness of mind.

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.

Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.

To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.