We're the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody's afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else.

Life will be wonderful when men no longer fear dying. When the last superstitions are thrown out and we meet death with the same equanimity as life. No longer will children's minds be twisted by evil gods whose fantastic origin is in those barbaric tribes who feared death and lightning, who feared life. That's it: life is the villain to to those who preach reward in death, through grace and eternal bliss, or through dark revenge.

All I want is that Americans still be able to read the alphabet in a hundred years. I am not very ambitious.

I'd still like to be the President, of course, and I think the best way to do that would be to raise an army and seize the Capital. This strikes me as true democracy.

Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.

You can only have a war with another country. You can't have a war with bad temper or a war against paranoids.

In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.