“It is senseless to proclaim that it’s evil to make generalizations about groups. Generalization is a natural human mental process, and many generalizations are true—in average. What often does promote evil behavior is the lazy, nasty habit of believing that generalizations have anything at all to do with individuals. We have no right to pre-judge that a specific man can’t nurture, or a particular woman cannot fight.”

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Compensation
Context: Our strength grows out of our weakness. The indignation which arms itself with secret forces does not awaken until we are pricked and stung and sorely assailed. A great man is always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill. The wise man throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off from him like a dead skin, and when they would triumph, lo! he has passed on invulnerable. Blame is safer than praise. I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies. In general, every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor.

Source: The Anti-Post-Modern Post-Modernist http://errolmorris.com/content/lecture/theantipost.html

Source: Brave New World (1932), Ch. 1

Source: "Relevance of laboratory experiments to testing resource allocation theory," 1980, p. 348.

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 53

A Hero of Our Time (1840; rev. 1841)

Testimony before the House Interior Committee (5 February 1981)
1980s

Letter to Lord Holland (28 July 1795), quoted in L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (London: Penguin, 1997), p. 160.
1790s

2010s, Erasing History? Monuments and Memory (January 2016)