The notion that the colonel need be a better man than the private is as confused as the notion that the keystone need be stronger than the coping stone.

He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.

[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.

You are all fundamentalists with a top dressing of science. That is why you are the stupidest of conservatives and reactionists in politics and the most bigoted of obstructionists in science itself. When it comes to getting a move on you are all of the same opinion: stop it, flog it, hang it, dynamite it, stamp it out.

At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world.

Although I cannot lay an egg, I am a very good judge of omelettes

Just as the historian can teach no real history until he has cured his readers of the romantic delusion that the greatness of a queen consists in her being a pretty woman and having her head cut off, so the playwright of the first order can do nothing with his audience until he has cured them of looking at the stage through the keyhole, and sniffing round the theatre as prurient people sniff round the divorce court.