The reasonable man will adjust to the demands of his environment. The unreasonable man expects his environment to adjust to his own needs. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.

I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

If I refuse to allow my leg to be amputated, its mortification and my death may prove that I was wrong; but if I let the leg go, nobody can ever prove that it would not have mortified had I been obstinate. Operation is therefore the safe side for the surgeon as well as the lucrative side.

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.

I can't talk religion to a man with bodily hunger in his eyes.