“The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.”

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 121.

Source: Reengineering management, 1995, p. 133

For What Reason do so Many Swedes Emigrate Every Year?, 1765.

"The Great Good Man" (1802).
Context: How seldom, friend! a good great man inherits
Honor or wealth, with all his worth and pains!
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits
If any man obtain that which he merits,
Or any merit that which he obtains.
.........
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends!
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good great man? Three treasures,—love and light,
And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath;
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,—
Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.

Avoir du mérite à s'abstenir d'une faute, c'est une façon d'être coupable.
Alexis (1929)

2013, Remarks on Economic Mobility (December 2013)

Source: The Forever War (1974), Chapter 20 (p. 108)

Source: The State — Its Historic Role (1897), I
Context: The State idea means something quite different from the idea of government. It not only includes the existence of a power situated above society, but also of a territorial concentration as well as the concentration in the hands of a few of many functions in the life of societies. It implies some new relationships between members of society which did not exist before the formation of the State. A whole mechanism of legislation and of policing has to be developed in order to subject some classes to the domination of others.
This distinction, which at first sight might not be obvious, emerges especially when one studies the origins of the State.