Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them.

We are condemned to kill time, thus we die bit by bit. - Octavio Paz The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

I should like to believe my people's religion, which was just what I could wish, but alas, it is impossible. I have really no religion, for my God, being a spirit shown merely by reason to exist, his properties utterly unknown, is no help to my life. I have nor the parson's comfortable doctrine that every good action has its reward, and every sin is forgiven. My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.

Mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else.

Grasshopper always wrong in argument with chicken.

William James describes a man who got the experience from laughing-gas; whenever he was under its influence, he knew the secret of the universe, but when he came to, he had forgotten it. At last, with immense effort, he wrote down the secret before the vision had faded. When completely recovered, he rushed to see what he had written. It was 'A smell of petroleum prevails throughout'.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.