All the controversialists who have become conscious of the real issue are already saying of our ideal exactly what used to be said of the Socialists' ideal. They are saying that private property is too ideal not to be impossible. They are saying that private enterprise is too good to be true. They are saying that the idea of ordinary men owning ordinary possessions is against the laws of political economy and requires an alteration in human nature.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

I would never commit the positively anti-social action of robbing a bank, or worse still, working in one.

I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.

If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse.