Democracy turns upon and devours itself. Universal suffrage, in theory the palladium of our liberties, becomes the assurance of our slavery. And that slavery will grow more and more abject and ignoble as the differential birth rate, the deliberate encouragement of mendicancy and the failure of popular education produce a larger and larger mass of prehensile half-wits, and so make the demagogues more and more secure.

The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science that smiles in your face while it picks your pocket.

The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give civilized entertainment.

Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a theory of the virtuous. ... The aim of medicine is surely not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard them from the consequences of their vices.

To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.

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