Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate.

The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.

War is the only sport which is genuinely amusing. And it is the only sport which has any intelligible use.

The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.

There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.

A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.

The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.