"Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality."

"The right to participate in the choice of representatives for Congress includes, as we have said, the right to cast a ballot and to have it counted at the general election whether for the successful candidate or not."

"Words, especially those of a constitution, are not to be read with such stultifying narrowness."

"The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered."

"The guarantees of civil liberty are but guarantees of freedom of the human mind and spirit and of reasonable freedom and opportunity to express them...The very essence of the liberty which they guarantee is the freedom of the individual from compulsion as to what he shall think and what he shall say..."

"History teaches us that there have been but few infringements of personal liberty by the state which have not been justified, as they are here, in the name of righteousness and the public good, and few which have not been directed, as they are now, at politically helpless minorities."

"To say that only those businesses affected with a public interest may be regulated is but another way of stating that all those businesses which may be regulated are affected with a public interest."

"Just what instrumentalities of either a state or the federal government are exempt from taxation by the other cannot be stated in terms of universal application."

"Thus viewed, law as it exists in the modern community may be conveniently, although perhaps not comprehensively, defined as the sum total of all those rules of conduct for which there is state sanction."

"All’s well that changes least."

"To be neurotic is to spend one’s life perpetually replacing one worry with the next."

"I used to fear that taking medication would change my personality; now I fear that it won’t."

"There are two types of people in this world — those who think that there are two types of people in this world, and those who don’t."

"To the optimist, pessimists are neurotic; to the pessimist, optimists are deluded."

"Facts are like kryptonite to teenagers."

"Social psychology is the scientific study of the obvious, which invariably leads to conflicting results."

"When it’s bad, I get depressed; when it’s good, I get nervous."

"When a psychoanalyst takes on the role of a blank screen, all he really learns is how the patient responds to people who try to act like they’re a blank screen."

"Don’t worry, there will always be something to worry about."

"Nowadays, the absence of catastrophic news is great news."

"I would do anything to keep indulging...including quitting indulging."

"Intuition is usually the first word, and is sometimes the last word, but should never be the only word."

"The human capacity for denial and rationalization is always shocking, but never surprising."

"There are only three things needed to eliminate human misery. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are."

"Insight is the booby prize of life."

"Emotion trumps logic."

"Things could always be worse. In fact, the overwhelming odds are that they will be."

"Levy’s style combines erudition with simplicity and earnestness with humor. The result is clear and compelling, accessible to lay persons and mental health professionals alike."

"It always is...until it's not."

"Winning isn’t as fun as losing is miserable."

"Spencer "was incapable", our critic haughtily remarks, "of discerning the difference between a homogeneity in matter, necessarily and blindly tending toward a heterogeneity, , and such a law of organism [sic], progress, and growth as requires a spiritual intelligence to originate and maintain it." Perheps he was a poor man! or perhaps he thought he had better discern and formulate progress where he could do it to the best advantage, and leave the postulating of spiritual intelligences to those who had a greater talent than he for building in the region of the unverifiable."

"Christianity is more than history; it is also a system of truths. Every event which its history records, either is a truth, or suggests a truth, or expresses a truth which man needs to assent to or to put into practice."

"A potential hegemon, as emphasized throughout this book, must be wealthier than any of its regional rivals and must possess the most powerful army in the area."

"When an aggressor comes on the scene, at least one other state will eventually take direct responsibility for checking it."

"Offensive realism predicts that the United States will send its army across the Atlantic when there is a potential hegemon in Europe that the local great powers cannot contain by themselves."

"This self-defeating behavior, so the argument goes, must be the result of warped domestic politics."

"The Soviet Union and its empire disappeared in large part because its smokestack economy could no longer keep up with the technological progress of the world's major economic powers."

"Important benefits often accrue to states that behave in an unexpected way."

"Bandwagoning is a strategy for the weak."

"The ideal situation for any state is to experience sharp economic growth while its rivals' economies grow slowly or hardly at all."

"States care about relative wealth, because economic might is the foundation of military might."

"The most dangerous states in the international system are continental powers with large armies."

"Decapitation is a fanciful strategy."

"The German air offensives against British cities in World Wars I and II not only failed to coerce the United Kingdom to surrender, but Germany also lost both wars."

"Specifically, the presence of oceans on much of the earth's surface makes it impossible for any state to achieve global hegemony."

"Simply put, the most powerful state is the one that prevails in a dispute."

"States have two kinds of power: latent power and military power."

"A state's potential power is based on the size of its population and the level of its wealth."

"In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler believed that his great-power rivals would be easy to exploit and isolate because each had little interest in fighting Germany and instead was determined to get someone else to assume the burden. He guessed right."

"Preserving power, rather than increasing it, is the main goal of states."