"The forgotten man... He works, he votes, generally he prays, but his chief business in life is to pay."

"Men never cling to their dreams with such tenacity as at the moment when they are losing faith in them, and know it, but do not dare yet to confess it to themselves."

"The waste of capital, in proportion to the total capital, in this country between 1800 and 1850, in the attempts which were made to establish means of communication and transportation, was enormous."

"It is remarkable that jealousy of individual property in land often goes along with very exaggerated doctrines of tribal or national property in land."

"There are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end ofthe search for the ultimate laws of nature."

"You have to be a bastard to make it, and that's a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth."

"The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master."

"Censorship is saying: 'I'm the one who says the last sentence. Whatever you say, the conclusion is mine.' But the internet is like a tree that is growing. The people will always have the last word - even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice. Such power will collapse because of a whisper."