Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
Eras
Modern
The twentieth century's colder aphorists and remaining classic voices.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
The average man doesn't want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up.
Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
Courage is grace under pressure.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that is unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
All zoos actually offer to the public 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.
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do.