“CIVILISATION is not to be judged by the rapidity of communication, but by the value of what is communicated.”

The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen.

[No society can survive the socialist] fallacy that there is an absolutely unlimited number of inspired officials and an absolutely unlimited amount of money to pay them.

The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.

Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.

Jesus promised his disciples three things—that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

God is like the sun; you cannot look at it, but without it you cannot look at anything else.

When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but in heaven’s name to what?

A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.

How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.

Idolatry is when you worship what you should use, and use what you should worship.

The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother.

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.

No man can break any of the Ten Commandments. He can only break himself against them.

The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.

No civilization is complete which does not include the dumb and defenseless of God’s creatures within the sphere of charity and mercy.

Civilization may be said indeed to be the creation of its outlaws.

By the same right under which France took Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, and will sooner or later take Belgium — by that same right Germany takes over Schleswig; it is the right of civilisation as against barbarism, of progress as against stability.

Bare-faced covetousness was the moving spirit of civilization from its first dawn to the present day; wealth, and again wealth, and for the third time wealth; wealth, not of society, but of the puny individual, was its only and final aim.

Wherever we look, the work of the chemist has raised the level of our civilization and has increased the productive capacity of the nation.

We must have no carelessness in our dealings with public property or the expenditure of public money. Such a condition is characteristic either of an undeveloped people, or of a decadent civilization. America is neither.

From the first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization.