John Dewey: “Custom consolidates what accident may have originated; established power has a way of legitimizing itself.”

Mistakes pile up and consolidate themselves into laws and methods of administration which are more harmful than the consequences which they were originally intended to control.

It rules but it does not regulate; for its rule is confined to receipt of tribute and ceremonial deference.

The easiest way out was to go back to the naked individual, to sweep away all associations as foreign to his nature and rights save as they proceeded from his own voluntary choice, and guaranteed his own private ends.

The invasion of the community by the new and relatively impersonal and mechanical modes of combined human behavior is the outstanding fact of modern life.