With the greatest possible solicitude avoid authorship. Too early or immoderately employed, it makes the head waste and the heart empty; even were th… - Johann Gottfried Herder

The Bramins have formed their people to such a degree of gentleness, courtesy, temperance and chastity, or at least have so confirmed them in these virtues, that Europeans frequently appear, on comparison with them, as beastly, drunken or mad. In their air and language they are unconstrainedly elegant; in their behaviour, friendly; in their persons, clean; in their way of life, simple and harmless ... they are not destitute of knowledge, still less of quiet industry or nicely imitative art; even the lowest castes learn reading, writing and arithmetic. . . .

— “The system of trade!” The greatness and uniqueness of the project is obvious! Three continents devastated and regimented by us, and we depopulated by them, emasculated, sunk in luxury, exploitation, and death: what a rich and happy deal!
Who could do other than to claim his share in the great whirling cloud that is sucking the life out of Europe, than to press for his place within it and to deliver his own children, if not another man’s, to it as the greatest man of trade?
The old name, shepherd of the peoples, has been changed to monopolist, and when the great cloud will one day burst and unleash a hundred tempests, then help us the great god Mammon, whom we are all serving now!

We see so much that we in fact see nothing, and we know so much that we no longer possess anything that is our own, that is to say, something we could not have learned, something that arises out of the virtues and errors of our own self