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All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.

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Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

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Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

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Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.

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Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.

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Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

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The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

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A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.

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Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. ...The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.

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I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

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