I never listen to debates. They are dreadful things indeed. The plain truth is that I am not a fair man, and don't want to hear both sides. On all kn….

Science is unflinchingly deterministic, and it has begun to force its determinism into morals. On some shining tomorrow a psychoanalyst may be put in….

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince..

Here is one of the fundamental defects of American fiction--perhaps the one character that sets it off sharply from all other known kinds of contempo….

No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a stat….

A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman..

A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against the….

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: it's one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him... One of its p….

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there..

Youth, though it may lack knowledge, is certainly not devoid of intelligence; it sees through shams with sharp and terrible eyes..

There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religi….

The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be indignant about them..

It costs more to maintain ten vices than one virtue..

The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liber….

The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty, that his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride in self- relian….

A Progressive is one who is in favor of more taxes instead of less, more bureaus and jobholders, more paternalism and meddling, more regulation of pr….

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence..

The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and that is precisely the kind that we mainly have..

Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religi….

[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other me….

It is the mission of the pedagogue, not to make his pupils think, but to make them think right, and the more nearly his own mind pulsates with the gr….