Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.

The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.

If there were only three women left in the world, two of them would immediately convene a court-martial to try the other one.

The more I think you over, the more it comes home to me what an unmitigated Middle Victorian ass you are!

The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's mind. And no wonder, for genuine liberty demands of its votaries a quality he lacks completely, and that is courage. The man who loves it must be willing to fight for it; blood, said Jefferson, is its natural manure. Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means the capacity for doing without . . . the average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe.

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.

Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops