Confidence: The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place

The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.

When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.

Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.

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.

Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator, and not infrequently they actually have comic touches to the victim. Happiness probably consists largely in the capacity to detect and relish them. A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.

Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted