In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.
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.
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear-fear of the unknown the complex the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety.
Penetrating so many secrets we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless calmly licking its chops.
Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
What men value in the world is not rights but privileges.
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy but that it is a bore.
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work stretch out in the sun and scratch himself.
Hope: A pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible.
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one wouldn't care to drink with - even if he drank.