We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within. – Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct. – Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

Barbarism is needed every four or five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilization. – Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal, 3 September 1855

We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden