There is only one justification for having sinned, and that is to be glad of it.

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science that smiles in your face while it picks your pocket.

[The] erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardised citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

The feelings that Beethoven put into his music were the feelings of a god. There was something olympian in his snarls and rages, and there was a touch of hellfire in his mirth.

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

Unionism, seldom if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work; almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguard bad work.

Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.