Philosophy, as the modern world knows it, is only intellectual club-swinging.

Any defeat, however trivial, may be fatal to a savior of the plain people. They never admire a messiah with a bloody nose.

Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.

God is a Republican, and Santa Claus is a Democrat.

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.

Everyman is thoroughly happy twice in his life, just after he has met his first love, and just after he has left his last one.

Los Angeles: nineteen suburbs in search of a metropolis.