"laissez faire" philosophy did not prevent the economically powerful from establishing control over wages, prices, and distribution of goods; it only prevented the government from doing so.

http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

Count your horror stories of attempted trust. Recollect. We then compare and decide we’ve equally been outdone by strangers we’ll never see again. Afterwards, mutual disinterest is the universal result; the only exceptions proving the rule: love takes a little distrust of self.

I can love you because I want to feel less alone, or I can love you because I want you to feel less alone. But only the latter requires me to imagine a consciousness independent of my own, and equally real.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/magazine/why-write-novels-at-all.html?pagewanted=2&_r=4&ref=books

“I cannot here withhold the statement that optimism, where it is not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbour nothing but words under their shallow foreheads, seems to me to be not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the unspeakable sufferings of mankind.”

Schopschop

http://www.the-spearhead.com/2010/10/01/a-plea-to-the-feminine/

“One side of the mouth spews empowerment and independence (from men), the other side asks, “Where are all the good men?” Where? You don’t need us and we need to be needed by you.”