Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.

The military caste did not originate as a party of patriots, but as a party of bandits

The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.

The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.

Change is not progress.

It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.