Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

There is at bottom only one genuinely scientific treatment for all diseases, and that is to stimulate the phagocytes.

The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.

Dogmatic toleration is nonsense: I would no more tolerate the teaching of Calvinism to children if I had power to persecute it than the British Raj tolerated suttee in India. Every civilized authority must draw a line between the tolerable and the intolerable.

I find that socialism is often misunderstood by its least intelligent supporters and opponents to mean simply unrestrained indulgence of our natural propensity to heave bricks at respectable persons.

They tell me that So-and-So, who does not write prefaces, is no charlatan. Well, I am. I first caught the ear of the British public on a cart in Hyde Park, to the blaring of brass bands,and this . . . because . . . I am a natural-born mountebank.

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.