My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

When you read a biography remember that the truth is never fit for publication.

Captain Shotover: How much does your soul eat? Ellie: Oh, a lot. It eats music and pictures and books and mountains and lakes and beautiful things to wear and nice people to be with.

Hollywood keeps before its child audiences a string of glorified young heroes, everyone of whom is an unhesitating and violent Anarchist. His one answer to everything that annoys him or disparages his country or his parents or his young lady or his personal code of manly conduct is to give the offender a "sock" in the jaw.... My observation leads me to believe that it is not the virtuous people who are good at socking jaws.

The moment we face it frankly we are driven to the conclusion that the community has a right to put a price on the right to live in it

It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.

A man who loses his money gains, at the least, experience, and sometimes, something better.