Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

The average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth... It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty - and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.

All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them.

Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.

There is no possibility whatsoever of reconciling science and theology, at least in Christendom. Either Jesus arose from the dead or He didn't. If he did, then Christianity becomes plausible; if He did not, then it is sheer nonsense. I defy any genuine scientists to say that he believes in the Resurrection, or indeed in any other cardinal dogma of the Christian system.

The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.

The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.