“To put away one’s own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.”

Business offers a kind of power, but only to the very successful at the top, and without the dominion and titles and red carpets and motorcycle escorts of public office.

Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.

When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.

Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.

Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.

Rome had Caesar, a man of remarkable governing talents, although it must be said that a ruler who arouses opponents to resort to assassination is probably not as smart as he ought to be.

in the midst of war and crisis nothing is as clear or as certain as it appears in hindsight

Human behavior is timeless.

The writer’s object is – or should be – to hold the reader’s attention.

Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.

While husbands and lovers in the stories are of all kinds, ranging from sympathetic to disgusting, women are invariably deceivers: inconstant, unscrupulous, quarrelsome, querulous, lecherous, shameless, although not necessarily all of these at once.

When people don’t have an objective, there’s much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting.

Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.

The whole vast challenge of a continent waiting to be exploited, combined to produce a prevailing materialism and an American drive bent as much, if not more, on money, property, and power than was true of the Old World from which we had fled.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

I would go swaggering into restaurants in some ridiculous tramp disguise, challenging them to mistreat me, order the things I was least likely to enjoy, then hurl my plate aside in a fury and demand to see the manager.

You have to have obedience; otherwise, the idea can spread that you don’t have to listen to the orders, and it can spread to important places.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

I was by far the least popular of the Blue Collar crew when we started. There was a definite pecking order, and everybody knew it.

We are not saved in order to be a blessing to other people.

In order to be the man, you have to beat the man.

Life is the same way. In order to attract more of the blessings that life has to offer, you must truly appreciate what you already have.

All are born to observe order, but few are born to establish it.