Self-assurance is contemptible and fatal unless it is self-knowledge.

It is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn.

Religion is the natural reaction of the imagination when confronted by the difficulties in a truculent world.

Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.

Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean.

We should have to abandon our vested illusions, our irrational religions and patriotisms.