In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.

When you sympathize with a married woman you either make two enemies or gain one wife and one friend.

God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, and the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in his arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; he will set them above their betters.

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.

The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.

Voting is simply a way of determining which side is the stronger without putting it to the test of fighting.

Man is the yokel par excellence, the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of the cosmos. He is chronically and unescapably deceived, not only by the other animals and by the delusive face of nature herself--by his incomparable talent for searching out and embracing what is false, and for overlooking and denying what is true.