The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.

Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

The English are no nearer than they were a hundred years ago to knowing what Jefferson really meant when he said that God had created all men equal.