Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there. A theologian is the man who finds it.

Before one may scare the plain people one must first have a firm understanding of the bugaboos that most facilely alarm them. One must study the schemes that have served to do it in the...

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than...

Every great wave of popular passion that rolls up on the prairies is dashed to spray when it strikes the hard rocks of Manhattan.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has...

Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face...

The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the...

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.

What I’d like to read is a scientific review, by a scientific psychologist–if any exists–of ‘A Scientific Man and the Bible’. By what route do otherwise sane men come to believe such palpable nonsense? How...

School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn’t...

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s...

Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.

Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done...

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder.

It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and...

Morality and honor are not to be confused. “The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has...

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted...

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.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of...

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

…there is reinforcement in such familiar back-formations as Chinee from Chinese, Portugee from Portuguese…. (p. 111)

He sees daily evidence that many things held to be true by nine-tenths of all men are, in reality, false, and he is thereby apt to acquire a doubt of everything, including his own beliefs.

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the...

A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.

Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.

Yet the same thing happens to the notions of morality. They are devised, at the start, as measures of expediency, and then given divine sanction in order to lend them authority.

I have often misunderstood men grossly, and I have misrepresented them when I understood them, sacrificing sense to make a phrase. Here, of course, is where even the most conscientious critic often goes aground; he...

Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence...

Indeed it may be said with some confidence that the average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. There are moments when his cogitations are relatively more respectable than usual, but...

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?

He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup,...

There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.

Qualsiasi persona normale di tanto in tanto prova la tentazione di sputarsi nelle mani, issare la bandiera nera e cominciare a tagliare le gole.

The best client is a scared millionaire.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.

It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of...

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.

The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda – a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas...

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that...