Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.

People seem to fight about things very unsuitable for fighting. They make a frightful noise in support of very quiet things. They knock each other about in the name of very fragile things.

When it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

If you'd take your head home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can't say. But it might.

Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.