God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, and the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in his arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; he will set them above their betters.

Sunday is a day given over by Americans to wishing that the themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.

It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind

Why writers write I do not know. As well ask why a hen lays an egg or why a cow stands patiently while an underprivileged farmer burglarizes her.

Every man is his own hell.

I can't imagine a genuinely intelligent boy getting much out of college, even out of a good college, save it be a cynical habit of mind.

A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. ... Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general ... are generally obeyed as a matter of duty (and) assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.