“I am sure of very little, and I shouldn’t be surprised if those things were wrong.”

Someday I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away.

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.

Whenever I hear people discussing birth control, I always remember that I was fifth.

In spite of all the yearnings of men, no one can produce a single fact or reason to support the belief in God and in personal immortality.

I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.

I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.

The man who fights for his fellow-man is a better man than the one who fights for himself.

I feel as I always have, that the earth is the home and the only home of man, and I am convinced that whatever he is to get out of his existence he must get while he is here.

Inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet.

Eugene V. Debs has always been one of my heroes.

No man is a good citizen, a good neighbor, a good friend, or a good man just because he obeys the law. The intrinsic worth is determined mainly by the intrinsic make-up.

Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man.

I have lived my life, and I have fought my battles, not against the weak and the poor – anybody can do that – but against power, against injustice, against oppression, and I have asked no odds from them, and I never shall.

If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.

It must always be remembered that all laws are naturally and inevitably evolved by the strongest force in a community, and in the last analysis made for the protection of the dominant class.

The trouble with law is lawyers.

The greatest thing you can do is surprise yourself.

You’d be surprised how little I knew even up to yesterday

We had avoided discovery by the Sioux scouts, and we were confident of giving them a complete surprise.

It seems wisest to assume the worst from the beginning, and let anything better come as a surprise.

Comedy is surprises, so if you’re intending to make somebody laugh and they don’t laugh, that’s funny.

Better to put things at the worst at first and reserve the best for a surprise.

Always do business as if the person you’re doing business with is trying to screw you, because he probably is. And if he’s not, you can be pleasantly surprised.

God often does His best work in us when He catches us by surprise and introduces a change that is completely against our own desire.