Religion is "so absurd that it comes close to imbecility."

I hope I need not confess that a large part of my stock in trade consists of platitudes rescued from the cobwebbed shelves of yesterday... This borrowing and refurbishing of shop-worn goods, as a matter of fact, is the invariable habit of traders in ideas, at all times and everywhere. It is not, however, that all the conceivable human notions have been thought out; it is simply, to be quite honest, that the sort of men who volunteer to think out new ones seldom, if ever, have wind enough for a full day's work.

Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.

The fundamental trouble with marriage is that it shakes a man's confidence in himself, and so greatly diminishes his general competence and effectiveness. His habit of mind becomes that of a commander who has lost a decisive and calamitous battle. He quite trusts himself thereafter.

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin or when he sees silver he looks for the cloud it lines. A wise happy person does the exact opposite.

Those who can't teach - administrate. Those who can't administrate - go into politics.

Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted