“Dissatisfaction with his lot seems to be the characteristic of man in all ages and climates. So far, however, from being an evil, as at first might be supposed, it has been the great civiliser of our race; and has tended, more than any thing else, to raise us above the condition of the brutes.”
Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1852)