Democracy must be a sound scheme at bottom, else it would not survive such cruel strains.

The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should know better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame.

Never let your inferiors do you a favor - it will be extremely costly.

Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world.

Man is the yokel par excellence, the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of the cosmos. He is chronically and unescapably deceived, not only by the other animals and by the delusive face of nature herself--by his incomparable talent for searching out and embracing what is false, and for overlooking and denying what is true.

The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous; the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.

Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.