The Catholic clergy seldom bother to make their arguments plausible; it is plain that they have little respect for human intelligence, and indeed little belief in its existence.

[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.

The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous.

The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked.

When a woman says she won't, it's a good sign that she will. And when she says she will, it is an even better sign.

No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.

The public, with its mob yearning to be instructed, edified and pulled by the nose, demands certainties; it must be told definitely and a bit raucously that this is true and that is false. But there are no certainties.