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

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 are so clothed in rationalization and dissemblance that we can recognize but dimly the deep primal impulses that motivate us. – James Ramsey Ullman