“My tendency to nervousness in my younger days, in view of the fact of a number of near relatives on both my father’s and mother’s side of the house having become insane, gave some serious uneasiness. I made up my mind to overcome it.... In the cross-examination of witnesses before a crowded court-house ... I soon found I could control myself even in the worst of testing cases. Finally, in battle.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“It seems to me that there must be an ecological limit to the number of paper pushers the earth can sustain, and that human civilization will collapse when the number of, say, tax lawyers exceeds the world’s total population of farmers, weavers, fisherpersons, and pediatric nurses.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)