The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.

I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.

Democracy is grounded upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of taboos, else even halfwits would argue it to pieces. Its first concern must be to penalize the free play of ideas.

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

The State is not force alone. It depends upon the credulity of man quite as much as upon his docility. Its aim is not merely to make him obey, but also to make him want to obey.

The notion that anything is gained by fixing a language in a groove is cherished only by pedants.

[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.