Here is tragedy - and here is America. For the curse of the country, as well of all democracies, is precisely the fact that it treats its best men as enemies. The aim of our society, if it may be said to have an aim, is to iron them out. The ideal American, in the public sense, is a respectable vacuum.

Capitalism under democracy has a further advantage: its enemies, even when it is attacked, are scattered and weak, and it is usually easily able to array one half of them against the other half, and thus dispose of both.

The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.

It is, indeed, one of the capital tragedies of youth-and youth is the time of real tragedy-that the young are thrown mainly with adults they do not quite respect.

Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.

He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.