“Government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world shall last his days.”
Regretful feeling
Regretful Quotes — page 136 of 169
“A man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies and hatreds of his competitors.”
“Conservatism, ever more timorous and narrow, disgusts the children, and drives them for a mouthful of fresh air into radicalism.”
“The nonconformist and the rebel say all manner of unanswerable things against the existing republic, but discover to our sense no plan of house or state of their own.”
“I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me.”
“Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word politics ....?”
“Who is he that shall control me? Why may not I act and speak and write and think with entire freedom? What am I to the universe, or, the unvierse, what is it to me? Who hath forged the chains of wrong and right, of Opinion and Custom? And must I wear them?”
“Each man too is a tyrant in tendency, because he would impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defence. Jesuswould absorb the race; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power.”
“Society has no bribe for me.”
“I find nothing healthful or exalting in the smooth conventions of society. I do not like the close air of saloons. I begin to suspect myself to be a prisoner, though treated with all this courtesy and luxury. I pay a destructive tax in my conformity.”
“You cannot institute, without peril of charlatanism.”
“Hence, the less government we have, the better,--the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formalGovernment, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation.”
“Our expense is almost all for conformity. It is for cake that we run in debt; 'tis not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that costs so much.”
“Meek young men grow up in colleges and believe it is their duty to accept the views which books have given, and grow up slaves.”
“The highest virtue is always against the law.”
“As the haves and have-nots split further and further apart, destabilization ultimately leads to revolution, not evolution. If we're playing the evolution vs. revolution game, we are closer to revolution than we are to evolution in my concept.”
“The trouble with this world is that everybody has to compromise and conform.”
“I'm not in sympathy with Communism except for populations which are in a state of peasantry, actually hungry and starving. The ideal state for me is some form of Socialism, which doesn't yet exist, as far as I know, which doesn't repress the arts, or any race. Consequently I'm not a political person ... except that I'm a revolutionary.”
“The "just say no" campaign at this point is a lot like drawing sea-monsters over certain unexplored areas of the map and expecting people to stay away. It may work for some, but explorers live for this kind of thing.”
“The party impulse is a very subversive impulse. I mean, you know, a lot of artists have too much integrity to sell their art as a brand; but who has so much integrity that they would turn down a party?”