Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world.

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.

It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.

No man ever quite believes in any other man.

Here the only genuine conflict is between true believers. Of a given text in Holy Writ one faction may say this thing and another that, but both agree unreservedly that the text itself is impeccable, and neither in the midst of the most violent disputation would venture to accuse the other of doubt. To call a man a doubter in these parts is equal to accusing him of cannibalism. Even the infidel Scopes himself is not charged with any such infamy.

A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.