Politics, as hopeful men practise it in the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a change in substance.

On the one hand, we may tell the truth, regardless of consequences, and on the other hand we may mellow it and sophisticate it to make it humane and tolerable.

Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: it's one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him... One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them.

Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.

The prophesying business is like writing fugues; it is fatal to every one save the man of absolute genius.

I'm thoroughly convinced that editors don't help authors.