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.

Tolerance is a virtue of people who don't believe in anything anymore.

When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them.

The Sentimentalist, roughly speaking, is the man who wants to eat his cake and have it. He has no sense of honor about ideas; he will not see that one must pay for an idea as well as for anything else. He will have them all at once in one wild intellectual harem, no matter how much they quarrel and contradict each other.

There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.

The martyr endured tortures to affirm his belief in truth but he never asserted his disbelief in torture.

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.