Status Anxiety

Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America, 1835): In France, we are worried about the increasing rate of suicides. In America, suicide is rare, but I am told that madness is commoner than anywhere else.

Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena, 1851): Otherpeople's heads are to wretched a place for true happiness to have its seat.

Chamfort: Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.

Voltaire: La terre est couverte de gens qui ne meritent pas qu'on leur parle (the earth swarms with people who are not worth talking to)

Schopenhauer: There is the world only the choice between loneliness and vulgarity.