To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man's first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.

I think that when in doubt about the truth of an issue, it's safer and in better taste to select the least numerous of the adversaries.

Did it ever occur to you, that there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical? There is no conflict, and no call for sacrifice, and no man is a threat to the aims of another if men understand that reality is an absolute not to be faked, that lies do not work, that the unearned cannot be had, that the undeserved cannot be given, that the destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't.

I think it's a sin to sit down and let your life go without making a try for it.

Romantic art is the fuel and the spark plug of a Man's soul. It's task is to set a soul on fire and never let it go out.