It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality. – Samuel Johnson
Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true. – Samuel Johnson
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them. – Samuel Johnson
He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man. – Samuel Johnson
In America everybody is of opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards. – Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays, 1950