The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing, it is the thing to watch over and care for and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous. . . .

I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have so much of it.

The idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself. One baby can, furnish more business than you and your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities.

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?

What is the real function, the essential function, the supreme function, of language? Isn't it merely to convey ideas and emotions? Certainly. Then if we can do it with words of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome forms?

One gains at least two to three times more experience grabbing the tiger by the tail than reading about it in a book.

Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.