We must be fond of the world, even in order to change it.
You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.
Democracy is like blowing your nose. You may not do it well, but it’s something you ought to do yourself.
There is less difference than many suppose between the ideal Socialist system, in which the big businesses are run by the State, and the present Capitalist system, in which the State is run by the big businesses.
The big corporation is not in the least remarkable for efficiency; it is only too big to be blamed for its inefficiency.
Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people; the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of a democracy, and a respect for labor uncorrupted by cynicism.
Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags.
In truth the Church is too unique to prove herself unique. For most popular and easy proof is by parallel; and here there is no parallel.
Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.
Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution.
The simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality.
A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.
Doing nothing is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of man.
If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse.
A good joke is the closest thing we have to divine revelation.
It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch.
Mr. McCabe thinks that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny and nothing else.
Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or in German.
It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden.
Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.