Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly. He is like a watch of which the most that can be said is that its cosmetic effect is good.

One of the things that makes a Negro unpleasant to white folk is the fact that he suffers from their injustice. He is thus a standing rebuke to them.

If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.

There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.

Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.

The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.

Of learned men, the clergy show the lowest development of professional ethics. Any pastor is free to cadge customers from the divines of rival sects, and to denounce the divines themselves as theological quacks.