Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

The comic element is the incorrigible element in every human being; the capacity to learn, from experience or instruction, is what is forbidden to all comic creations and to what is comic in you and me.

We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

A politician or political thinker who calls himself a political realist is usually boasting that he sees politics, so to speak, in the raw; he is generally a proclaimed cynic and pessimist who makes it his business to look behind words and fine speeches for the motive. This motive is always low.

Sex annihilates identity, and the space given to sex in contemporary novels is an avowal of the absence of character.

most people did not care to be taught what they did not already know; it made them feel ignorant.