The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

If associations to control burglary and murder were tolerated we should take it for granted that the members should all be burglers and murderers.

The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary. rather tiresomely addicted to dressing himself up as Handel or Beethoven and making a prolonged and intolerable noise.

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

My schooling did me a great deal of harm and no good whatever; it was simply dragging a child's soul through the dirt.

No child should be brought up to suppose that its food and clothes come down from heaven or are miraculously conjured from empty space by papa. Loathsome as we have made the idea of duty (like the idea of work) we must habituate children to a sense of repayable obligation to the community for what they consume and enjoy, and inculcate the repayment as a point of honor.

You're only a beginner; and what you think is love, and interest, and all that, is not real love at all: three quarters of it is only unsatisfied curiosity.