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I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
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I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.
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Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
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It is a fact that no man improves much after the age of 60 and after 65, most suffer a really alarming decline. I could give some examples, but at the advice of my publisher will refrain from doing so.
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One does not arise from such a book as Sister Carrie with a smirk of satisfaction; one leaves it infinitely touched.
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I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.
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Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers.
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The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
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Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
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That it should still be necessary, at this late stage in the senility of the human race to argue that women have a fine and fluent intelligence is surely an eloquent proof of the defective observation, incurable prejudice, and general imbecility of their lords and masters.
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Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
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A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
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Public opinion, in its raw state, gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob's fear. It is piped into central factories, and there it is flavoured and coloured and put into cans.
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The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.
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Time stays, we go.
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A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.
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A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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Man is the yokel par excellence, the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of the cosmos. He is chronically and unescapably deceived, not only by the other animals and by the delusive face of nature herself--by his incomparable talent for searching out and embracing what is false, and for overlooking and denying what is true.
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Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
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Life may not be exactly pleasant, but it is at least not dull. Heave yourself into Hell today, and you may miss, tomorrow or next day, another Scopes trial, or another War to End War, or perchance a rich and buxom widow with all her first husband's clothes. There are always more Hardings hatching. I advocate hanging on as long as possible.
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The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.
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When you sympathize with a married woman you either make two enemies or gain one wife and one friend.
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Some boys go to college and eventually succeed in getting out. Others go to college and never succeed in getting out. The latter are called professors.
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We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.