Public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.

The only imaginative prose writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past.

Every Joke is a Tiny Revolution

You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that evey sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.

Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be tracked down by inquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could not alter your feelings, for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.