A book is like a child: it is easier to bring it into the world than to control it when it is launched there.

If you do not write for publication, there is little point in writing at all.

Consciousness of a fact is not knowing it: if it were, the fish would know more of the sea than the geographers and the naturalists.

Capitalism justified itself and was adopted as an economic principle on the express ground that it provides selfish motives for doing good, and that human beings will do nothing except for selfish motives

You are all alike, you respectable people. You can't tell me the bursting strain of a ten-inch gun, which is a very simple matter;but you all think you can tell me the bursting strain of a man under temptation. You daren't handle high explosives; but you're all ready to handle honesty and truth and justice and the whole duty of man, and kill one another at that game. What a country! What a world!

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

I would exchange every painting of Christ for one snapshot.