That a bad man be “free,”—permitted to unfold himself in his particular way, is contrariwise the fatallest curse you could inflict on him; curse and nothing else, to him and all his neighbours. Him the very Heavens call upon you to persuade, to urge, induce, compel, into something of well-doing; if you absolutely cannot, if he will continue in ill-doing,—then for him (I can assure you, though you will be shocked to hear it), the one “blessing” left is the speediest gallows you can lead him to. Speediest, that at least his ill-doing may cease quàm primùm.

Unlike scientific theories, philosophical theories are not empirically falsifiable. For example, you do not go about attempting to disprove the philosophical assertion "LSD opens up new levels of reality" by studying in the laboratory the effects of LSD. To be sure, such facts might be helpful, but we could not judge their importance until we had wrestled with the more fundamental questions "What is reality?" and "Flow do we know something is real in the first place?"

Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.