The way to make a million dollars is to start a religion.

Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.

...the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.

Progress and reaction have both turned out to be swindles. Seemingly, there is nothing left but quietism - robbing reality of its terrors by simply submitting to it.

Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me--

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.