“Work is its own best earthly need,
Else have we none more than the sea-born throng
Who wrought these marvellous isles that bloom afar.”

Source: Mysteries (1978), p. 125
Context: No matter how honest scientists think they are, they are still influenced by various unconscious assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. Expressed in a sentence, Fort's principle goes something like this: People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.

Act I
What Every Woman Knows (1908)

Barbara Walters interview
Context: I just don't understand the need to name something "the best" or more better than something else. Saying one thing is better than another, one performance is better than another performance — there can't be a contest in this area. I don't understand that.

Cleon.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter IX : The New Generation, p. 228

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), Apology
Context: Folk say, a wizard to a northern king
At Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show,
That through one window men beheld the spring,
And through another saw the summer glow,
And through a third the fruited vines a-row,
While still, unheard, but in its wonted way,
Piped the drear wind of that December day.
So with this Earthly Paradise it is,
If ye will read aright, and pardon me,
Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss
Midmost the beating of the steely sea,
Where tossed about all hearts of men must be;
Whose ravening monsters mighty men shall slay,
Not the poor singer of an empty day.

http://home2.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fhome2.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2F2006b%2Fpr301-06.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1
Illegal Immigration

pg. 147
Pretty Mess book (2018)