The churches must learn humility as well as teach it.

It's just as unpleasant to get more than you bargain for as to get less.

Nationalism must now be added to the refuse pile of superstitions. We are now citizens of the world, and the man who divides the race into elect Irishmen and reprobate foreign devils (especially Englishmen) had better live on the Blaskets where he can admire himself without disturbance.

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!

Nobody can live in society without conventions. The reason why sensible people are as conventional as they can bear to be is that conventionality saves so much time and thought and trouble and social friction of one sort or another that it leaves them much more leisure time for freedom than unconventionality does.

Some persons, by hating vice too much, come to love men too little. Hatred is self-punishment. Hatred is the cowards revenge for being intimidated.

Consciousness of a fact is not knowing it: if it were, the fish would know more of the sea than the geographers and the naturalists.