Every man feels that his experience is unlike that of anybody else and therefore he should write it down-- he finds also that everybody else has thought and felt on some points precisely as he has done, and therefore he should write it down.

It is a worthy thing to fight for one's freedom; it is another sight finer to fight for another man's.

My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian-an early Indian. Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. All those Salem witches were ancestors of mine. Your people made it tropical for them. . . . The first slave brought into New England out of Africa was an ancestor of mine-for I am a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel.

The existing phrasebooks are inadequate. They are well enough as far as they go, but when you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say.

More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the [biblical] texts that authorised them remain.

Modesty died when clothes were born.

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.