Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.

Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.

Without an element of the obscene there can be no true and deep aesthetic or moral conception of life...It is read more

Without an element of the obscene there can be no true and deep aesthetic or moral conception of life...It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene they could never have dared to be great.

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at read more

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because read more

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die out, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

It is a governing principle of nature, that the agency which can produce most good, when perverted from its proper read more

It is a governing principle of nature, that the agency which can produce most good, when perverted from its proper aim, is most productive of evil. It behooves the well-intentioned, therefore, vigorously to watch the tendency of even their most highly prized institutions, since that which was established in the interests of the right, may so easily become the agent of the wrong.

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it read more

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel.

Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.

Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.

The thoughts of Plato and Machiavelli... don't seem quite enough armor for a world beset with splitting the atoms, urban read more

The thoughts of Plato and Machiavelli... don't seem quite enough armor for a world beset with splitting the atoms, urban guerrillas, nineteen varieties of psychotherapists, amplified guitars, napalm, computers, astronauts, and an atmosphere polluted simultaneously with auto exhaust and TV commercials.