This is the way human beings contrive to feed their self-destructive vices: trying not to see them, trying not to acknowledge them, delaying the important decisions and pretending that nothing will happen.

Any law that uplifts the human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

To sell the overplus I cannot, because I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species. To hire them out, is almost as bad, because they could not be disposed of in families to any advantage, and to disperse the families I have an aversion. What then is to be done? Something must or I shall be ruined; for all the money (in addition to what I raise by Crops, and rents) that have been received for Lands, sold within the last four years, to the amount of Fifty thousand dollars, has scarcely been able to keep me a float.

I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind; and therefore ... I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number.

That's the trouble with the world. We all despise ourselves.

If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.