At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.

At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.

The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights.

Capital punishment has probably been responsible for a good deal of human progress. The overwhelming majority of those executed were of the sort whose departures for bliss eternal improved the average intelligence and decency of the race.

A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.

Better than the rest of us, they [the Jews] sensed what was ahead for their people.

When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre.