The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency.

Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something.

The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar... Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen.

Cleanliness is next to fordliness.

Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east.

The pursuit of truth is just a polite name for the intellectual's favorite pastime of substituting simple and therefore false abstractions for the living complexities of reality.

The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg- eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.