It is almost as safe to assume that an artist of any dignity is against his country, i.e., against the environment in which God hath placed him, as it is to assume that his country is against the artist.

It is almost impossible for an Anglo-Saxon to write of sex without being dirty.

A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.

The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.

A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.

We must think of human progress, not as of something going on in the race in general, but as something going on in a small minority, perpetually beleaguered in a few walled towns. Now and then the horde of barbarians outside breaks through, and we have an armed effort to halt the process. That is, we have a Reformation, a French Revolution, a war for democracy, a Great Awakening. The minority is decimated and driven to cover. But a few survive- and a few are enough to carry on.