The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.

When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.

Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines.

The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.

It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.

The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.

The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.