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.

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.

Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibilists on the other.

The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.

The function of a newspaper in a democracy is to stand as a sort of chronic opposition to the reigning quacks. The minute it begins to out-whoop them it forfeits its character and becomes ridiculous.

A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.

The Jews fastened their religion upon the Western world, not because it was more reasonable than the religions of their contemporaries - as a matter of fact, it was vastly less reasonable than many of them - but because it was far more poetical.