The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's mind. And no wonder, for genuine liberty demands of its votaries a quality he lacks completely, and that is courage. The man who loves it must be willing to fight for it; blood, said Jefferson, is its natural manure. Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means the capacity for doing without . . . the average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe.

The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.

[Government's] great contribution to human wisdom...is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.

One does not arise from such a book as Sister Carrie with a smirk of satisfaction; one leaves it infinitely touched.

Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn

Every reader of the Dreiser novels must cherish astounding specimens--of awkward, platitudinous marginalia, of whole scenes spoiled by bad writing, of phrases as brackish as so many lumps of sodium hyposulphite.

No politician is ever benefited by saving money; it is spending it that makes him.