“I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever.”

I must say I’m not very fond of oratory that’s so full of energy it hasn’t any room for facts.

You have more people that love you than you know.

One quarter are afraid to speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive.

Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country.

As ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.

Life is hard and astonishingly complicated…. No one great reform will make it easy.

You’re so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.

I’ve heard of their curing syphilis by giving the patient malaria, but I’ve never heard of their curing malaria by giving the patient syphilis.

I love America, but I don’t like it.

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.

He loved the people just as much as he feared and detested persons.

So much in a revolution is nothing but waiting.

Love is the one thing that can really sure-enough lighten all of life’s dark clouds.

We’re tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers… coax us, ‘Be calm! Be patient! Wait!

Is it possible that nobody has ever known that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won’t be for another thousand years?

My objection to the church isn’t that the preachers are cruel, hypocritical, actually wicked, though some of them are that, too .