The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong.

Price is a crazy and incalculable thing, while Value is an intrinsic and indestructible thing.

If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.

Literary men are being employed to praise a big business man personally, as men used to praise a king. They not only find political reasons for the commercial schemes that they have done for some time past they also find moral defences for the commercial schemers... I do resent the whole age of patronage being revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets becoming court poets, under kings that have taken no oath.

I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion.

My life is passed in making bad jokes and seeing them turn into true prophecies.

One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place.