Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble?Making life means making trouble. There’s only one way of escaping trouble; and that’s killing things.

God's trustiest lieutenants often lack official credentials. They may be professed atheists who are also men of honour and high public spirit.

[...] any fool can make a discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its life than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory.

Self-denial is not a virtue; it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.

When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody else who has no aptitude for it, and gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed the education of a gentleman.

The danger of crippling thought, the danger of obstructing the formation of the public mind by specially suppressing ... representations is far greater than any real danger that there is from such representations.