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.

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...

A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

…the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.

We are, in fact, a nation of evangelists; every third American devotes himself to improving and lifting up his fellow-citizens, usually by force; the messianic delusion is our national disease.

The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the...

American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.

The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge...

The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.

Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn’t believe he is dead.

Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than...

When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.

Self-respect–the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more...

The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

It seems to be difficult if not impossible for human beings to avoid thinking of government as mystical entity with a nature and a history all its own. It constitutes for them a creature somehow...

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.

Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

Race relations never improve in war time; they always worsen. And it is when the boys come home the Ku Klux Klans are organized. I believe with George Schuyler that the only really feasible way...

The Jews could be put down very plausible as the most unpleasant race ever heard of. As commonly encountered they lack any of the qualities that mark the civilized man: courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease, confidence....

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.