It is not a sign of communal well-being when men turn to their government to execute all their business for them, but rather a sign of decay, as in the United States today. The state, indeed, is but one of the devices that a really healthy community sets up to manage its affairs.

The fundamental trouble with marriage is that it shakes a man's confidence in himself, and so greatly diminishes his general competence and effectiveness. His habit of mind becomes that of a commander who has lost a decisive and calamitous battle. He quite trusts himself thereafter.

The instant I reach Heaven, I'm going to speak to God very sharply.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose - for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.

Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.

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

Justice is what you get when you run out of money.