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.

Evil: That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake

The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.

One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.

No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia.

The military caste did not originate as a party of patriots, but as a party of bandits