The chief business of the nation, as a nation, is the setting up of heroes, mainly bogus.

Good government is that which delivers the citizen from being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently-one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified, and more agreeable undertakings.

In any combat between a rogue and a fool the sympathy of mankind is always with the rogue.

The ideal way to get rid of any infectious disease would be to shoot instantly every person who comes down with it.

The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

It costs more to maintain ten vices than one virtue.

Everyman is thoroughly happy twice in his life, just after he has met his first love, and just after he has left his last one.