Every original idea is first ridiculed, then vigorously attacked, and finally taken for granted.

To conceal a want of real ideas, many make for themselves an imposing apparatus of long compound words, intricate flourishes and phrases, new and unheard-of expressions, all of which together furnish an extremely difficult jargon that sounds very learned. Yet with all this they say-precisely nothing.

When a new truth enters the world, the first stage of reaction to it is ridicule, the second stage is violent opposition, and in the third stage, that truth comes to be regarded as self-evident.

You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.

Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!

Vengeance taken will often tear the heart and torment the conscience.

Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.