To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.

There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past.

[Capitalism is] that commercial system in which supply immediately answers to demand, and in which everybody seems to be thoroughly dissatisfied and unable to get anything he wants.

What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read.

There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.

If you happen to read fairy tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the other--the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is the core of the nursery-tales.

The chief object of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things.