It is well to be off with the old woman before you're on with the new.

Where there is no knowledge ignorance calls itself science.

Civilization is a disease produced by the practice of building societies with rotten material.

A man's own self is the last person to believe in him, and is harder to cheat than the rest of the world.

I myself have been particularly careful never to say a civil word to the United States. I have scoffed at their inhabitants as a nation of villagers. I have defined the 100 % American as 99 % an idiot. And they adore me.

We are compelled by the theory of God's already achieved perfection to make Him a devil as well as a god, because of the existenceof evil. The god of love, if omnipotent and omniscient, must be the god of cancer and epilepsy as well.... Whoever admits that anything living is evil must either believe that God is malignantly capable of creating evil, or else believe that God has made many mistakes in His attempts to make a perfect being.

The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.