It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him

Henry James would have been vastly improved as a novelist by a few whiffs of the Chicago stockyard.

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.

Watching two women kiss is like watching two prizefighters shake hands.

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

Public opinion, in its raw state, gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob's fear. It is piped into central factories, and there it is flavoured and colored and put into cans.

The State is not force alone. It depends upon the credulity of man quite as much as upon his docility. Its aim is not merely to make him obey, but also to make him want to obey.