Henry James would have been vastly improved as a novelist by a few whiffs of the Chicago stockyard.

The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin or when he sees silver he looks for the cloud it lines. A wise happy person does the exact opposite.

We must think of human progress, not as of something going on in the race in general, but as something going on in a small minority, perpetually beleaguered in a few walled towns. Now and then the horde of barbarians outside breaks through, and we have an armed effort to halt the process. That is, we have a Reformation, a French Revolution, a war for democracy, a Great Awakening. The minority is decimated and driven to cover. But a few survive- and a few are enough to carry on.

The chief knowledge that's man on from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.

The most common of all follies is to believe in the palpably untrue.