Pastor: One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example that virtue doesn't pay.

The more I think you over, the more it comes home to me what an unmitigated Middle Victorian ass you are!

Under the pressure of fanaticism, and with the mob complacently applauding the show, democratic law tends more and more to be grounded upon the maxim that every citizen is, by nature, a traitor, a libertine, and a scoundrel. In order to dissuade him from his evil-doing the police power is extended until it surpasses anything ever heard of in the oriental monarchies of antiquity.

Religion is "so absurd that it comes close to imbecility."

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

The fundamental trouble with marriage is that it shakes a man's confidence in himself, and so greatly diminishes his general competence and effectiveness. His habit of mind becomes that of a commander who has lost a decisive and calamitous battle. He quite trusts himself thereafter.

Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted