The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.

It is not the drinker, but the man who has just stopped drinking, who thinks the world is going to the dogs.

War may make a fool of man, but it by no means degrades him; on the contrary, it tends to exalt him, and its net effects are much like those of motherhood on women.

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

All government is, in its essence, organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man.

The artist is not a reporter, but a Great Teacher. It is not his business to depict the world as it is, but as it ought to be.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.