I never said a word against eminent men of science. What I complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposes itself to be scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of new religion and an uncommonly nasty one. When people talked about the fall of man, they knew they were talking about a mystery, a thing they didn't understand. Now they talk about the survival of the fittest: they think they do understand it, whereas they have not merely no notion, they have an elaborately false notion of what the words mean.

I will go forth as a real outlaw," he said, "and as men do robbery on the highway I will do right on the highway; and it will be counted a wilder crime.

'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'

The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.

No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

Whatever else may be said of man, this one thing is clear: He is not what he is capable of being.