Conscience is the accumulated sediment of ancestral faint- heartedness

The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails.

I never listen to debates. They are dreadful things indeed. The plain truth is that I am not a fair man, and don't want to hear both sides. On all known subjects, ranging from aviation to xylophone-playing, I have fixed and invariable ideas. They have not changed since I was four or five.

Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.

If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.

Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.

Confidence: The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place