Politics, as hopeful men practise it in the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a change in substance.
One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions. At least ninety-five Americans out of every 100 believe that this process is honest and even laudable; it is practically impossible to convince them that there is anything evil in it. In other words, they cannot grasp the concept of liberty.
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.
Since the early days, [the church] has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was an apologist for the divine right of kings.
Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.
For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble and necessary to the common weal, has no assurance that it will sustain him while he stands ready to practice it, or keep him out of the poorhouse when illness or age makes him idle.
Happiness is peace after strife, the overcoming of difficulties, the feeling of security and well-being. The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
For the habitual truth-teller and truth-seeker, indeed, the whole world has very little liking. He is always unpopular.
The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes: a smal l minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in, and a vast majority that finds them painful, and is thus arrayed against them, and against all who have traffic with them.
A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.
Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
When you sympathize with a married woman you either make two enemies or gain one wife and one friend.
The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.
Wife: a former sweetheart.
I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake.
One of the things that makes a Negro unpleasant to white folk is the fact that he suffers from their injustice. He is thus a standing rebuke to them.
It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
All American wars (except the Civil War) have been fought with the odds overwhelmingly in favor of the Americans. In the history of armed combat such affairs as the Mexican and Spanish-American Wars must be ranked, not as wars at all, but as organized assassinations. In the two World Wars, no American faced a bullet until his adversaries had been worn down by years of fighting others.
Pedagogues: More than any other class of blind leaders of the blind they are responsible for the degrading standardization which now afflicts the American people.
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
The only time you have a free press is when you own one.
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