The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.

Capital punishment has probably been responsible for a good deal of human progress. The overwhelming majority of those executed were of the sort whose departures for bliss eternal improved the average intelligence and decency of the race.

Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.

No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.

The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There are only men who have character and men who lack it.

The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goose step.

All talk of winning the people by appealing to their intelligence, of conquering them by impeccable syllogism, is so much moonshine.