Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock.

But to admire a strong person and to live under that strong person’s thumb are two different things.

The world was to Shakespeare a great stage of fools on which he was utterly bewildered. His pregnant observations of life are not coordinated into any philosophy.

I have not wasted my life trifling with literary fools in taverns, as Johnson did, when he should have been shaking England with the thunder of his spirit

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.

At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world.