We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us from bad laws.

The atheist is not interested in anything except attacks on atheism.

Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does not fear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any common prizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless--like a tree? Fight the thing that you fear. You remember the old tale of the English clergyman who gave the last rites to the brigand of Sicily, and how on his death-bed the great robber said, 'I can give you no money, but I can give you advice for a lifetime: your thumb on the blade, and strike upwards.' So I say to you, strike upwards, if you strike at the stars.

And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely.

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place...The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which made him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence.

No animal ever invented anything as bad as drunkenness - or so good as drink.