The extortions and oppressions of government will go on so long as such bare fraudulence deceives and disarms the victims; so long as they are ready to swallow the immemorial official theory that protesting against the stealings of the archbishop's secretary's nephew's mistress' illegitimate son is a sin against the Holy Ghost.

Christian endeavor is notoriously hard on female pulchritude.

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

Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting)? I can recall none in all the literature of the world

The federal [bank deposit] insurance scheme has worked up to now simply and solely because there have been very few bank failures. The next time we have a pestilence of them it will come to grief quickly enough, and if the good banks escape ruin with the bad ones it will be only because the taxpayer foots the bill.

A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.

It is a peculiarity of the American mind that it regards any excursion into the truth as an adventure into cynicism.