"No society has been able to abolish human sadness; no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa."

"Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson."

Student loans are intended to provide everyone with equal access to education, but the staggering amount of student loan debt that Americans currently hold is retarding economic growth and entrenching wealth inequality.

Internet service providers have filed suit against the FCC over its recent decision to regulate broadband internet as a public utility.

"Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad — but it does not carry instructions on how to use it. Such power has evident value — even though the power may be negated by what one does with it."

"The defect of equality," wrote the bombastic French dramatist, "is that we only desire it with our superiors."

"The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man — that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense — has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading."