The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.
Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.
All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.
One of the great attractions of patriotism – it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.
Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.
That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent.
From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.