"Every reform was once a private opinion...." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish.”

“Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.”

“Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious if unmixed.”

“The true reformer does not want time, nor money, nor coöperation, nor advice. What is time but the stuff delay is made of? And depend upon it, our virtue will not live on the interest of our money. He expects no income, but outgoes; so soon as we begin to count the cost, the cost begins. And as for advice, the information floating in the atmosphere of society is as evanescent and unserviceable to him as gossamer for clubs of Hercules.”

“We do not need more laws . No country suffers from a shortage of laws. We need a new model .”

“You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress.”

“That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state; but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is.”

“I like criticism, but it must be my way.”

“Everything that is popular is wrong.”