To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.

Solitude sometimes is best society.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

[Olmstead v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438 (1928) (dissenting)]

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said 'I want to be let alone!' There is all the difference.