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. Its evil effects must be plain enough to everyone. All it accomplishes is (a) to throw a veil of sanctity about ideas that violate every intellectual decency, and (b) to make every theologian a sort of chartered libertine. No doubt it is mainly to blame for the appalling slowness with which really sound notions make their way in the world.

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.... A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill.

All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers.

If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x times y is less than y

The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.

The American people, taking one with another, constitute the most timorous, snivelling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goosesteppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages.

It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.