“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.”

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

Government’s great contribution to human wisdom is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.

The ideal way to get rid of any infectious disease would be to shoot instantly every person who comes down with it.

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

There’s really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.

The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.

The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.

Change is not progress.

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

I had a good mind to discontinue permanently the supply of grain to the city, reliance on which had discouraged Italian agriculture, but refrained because some politician would be bound one day to revive the dole as a means of ingratiating himself with the people.

Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.

Remember that this greatness was won by men with courage, with knowledge of their duty, and with a sense of honor in action.

And only weaklings who lack courage and the power to feel they’re right when the whole world says they’re wrong, ever lose.

We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.

The sufferings that fate inflicts on us should be borne with patience, what enemies inflict with manly courage.

I have me brave women who are exploring the outer edge of human possibility, with no history to guide them, and with a courage to make themselves vulnerable that I find moving beyond words.

Courage, ne’er by sorrow broken! Aid where tears of virtue flow; Faith to keep each promise spoken! Truth alike to friend and foe!