You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

I may not practice what I preach but God forbid I should preach what I practice

The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed.

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

We cannot fling ourselves into the blank future; we can only call up images from the past. This being so, the important principle follows, that how many images we have largely depends on how much past we have.

Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.

Original sin is the only doctrine that's been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history.