The reasonable man will adjust to the demands of his environment. The unreasonable man expects his environment to adjust to his own needs. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.
All manifest life seems to require a period of sleep, of calm, in which to gain added strength, renewed vigour, for the next manifestation, or awakening to activity. Thus is the march of all progress, of all manifest life - in waves, successive waves, [of] activity and repose. Waves succeed each other in an endless chain of progression.
The population of the world is a conditional population; these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God.
The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time.
Only those young people can be accepted as healthy who refuse to be reconciled with the old order and foolishly or wisely struggle against it - such is the will of nature...