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

The notion that inspiration is something that happened thousands of years ago, and was then finished and done with. . . the theory that God retired from business at that period and has not been heard from since, is as silly as it is blasphemous.

A conquered nation is like a man with cancer: he can think of nothing else.

The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last.

Medical science is as yet very imperfectly differentiated from common cure-mongering witchcraft

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

The plain working truth is that it is not only good for people to be shocked occasionally, but absolutely necessary to the progress of society that they should be shocked pretty often.