Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.
There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.
The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle – a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.
When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
All government is, in its essence, organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man.
I’ve made it a rule never to drink by daylight and never to refuse a drink after dark.
Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.
What we need in this country is a general improvement in eating. We have the best raw materials in the world, both quantitatively and qualitatively, but most of them are ruined in the process of preparing them for the table.
Religion is “so absurd that it comes close to imbecility.”
The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother’s milk.
How do they taste? They taste like more.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
The martini: the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.
The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be indignant about them.
The more a man dreams, the less he believes.
The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake.
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
The best teacher of children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike.
The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous; the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.