The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precis….

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 a….

Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting)? I can recall none in all the literature of the world.

Good government is that which delivers the citizen from being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently-one that relieves him s….

The effect of every sort of New Deal is to increase and prosper the criminal class. It teaches precisely what all professional criminals believe, to ….

Evil: That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.

School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordi….

All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried….

New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam d….

Under the pressure of fanaticism, and with the mob complacently applauding the show, democratic law tends more and more to be grounded upon the maxim….

School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers..

If all the lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones were sold to a mah jong factory, we'd all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced….

The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists..

Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull.

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner..

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth..

the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe..

The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress..

Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true..

Chopin--Two embalmers at work upon a minor poetthe scent of tuberosesAutumn rain..

If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, an….