Now it has appeared to me unfair that humanity should be engaged perpetually in calling all those things bad which have been good enough to make other things better, in everlastingly kicking down the ladder by which it has climbed. It has appeared to me that progress should be something else besides a continual parricide; therefore I have investigated the dust-heaps of humanity, and found a treasure in all of them. I have found that humanity is not incidentally engaged, but eternally and systematically engaged, in throwing gold into the gutter and diamonds into the sea.

I should favour anything that would increase the present enormous authority of women and their creative action in their own homes. The average woman...is a despot; the average man is a serf.

He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.

We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.

You never know the best about men until you know the worst about them.

Is there anyone... who will maintain that the Party System could have been created by people particularly fond of truth?

We are like the penny, because we have the image of the king stamped on us, the divine king.