It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.
