Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We know life is futile. A man who considers that his life is of very wonderful importance is awfully close to a padded cell.
Everybody is a potential murderer. I've never killed anyone, but I frequently get satisfaction reading the obituary notices.
An agnostic is a doubter. The word is generally applied to those who doubt the verity of accepted religious creeds of faiths.
No nation can be really great that is held together by Gatling guns, and no true loyalty can be induced and kept through fear.
Laws have come down to us from old customs and folk-ways based on primitive ideas of man's origin, capacity and responsibility.
As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.
Hoover, if elected, will do one thing that is almost incomprehensible to the human mind: he will make a great man out of Coolidge.
I go to a better tailor than any of you and pay more for my clothes. The only difference is that you probably don't sleep in yours.
I had grown tired of standing in the lean and lonely front line facing the greatest enemy that ever confronted man -- public opinion.
Autobiography is never entirely true. No one can get the right perspective on himself. Every fact is colored by imagination and dream.
Wars always bring about a conservative reaction. They overwhelm and destroy patient and careful efforts to improve the condition of man.
I cannot tell and I shall never know how many words of mine might have given birth to cruelty in place of love and kindness and charity.
Physical deformity, calls forth our charity. But the infinite misfortune of moral deformity calls forth nothing but hatred and vengeance.
In spite of all the yearnings of men, no one can produce a single fact or reason to support the belief in God and in personal immortality.
Most lawyers only tell you about the cases they win. I can tell you about some I lose. A lawyer who wins all his cases does not have many.
The origin of the absurd idea of immortal life is easy to discover; it is kept alive by hope and fear, by childish faith, and by cowardice.
We're all killers at heart . . . . I have never taken anybody's life, but I have often read obituary notices with considerable satisfaction.
If there is to be any permanent improvement in man and any better social order, it must come mainly from the education and humanizing of man.
The really intelligent are as abnormal as the defective. The great masses of men are rather mediocre, and those above and below are exceptions.
Life is a never-ending school, and the really important lessons all tend to teach man his proper relation to the environment where he must live.
The world is made up for the most part of morons and natural tyrants, sure of themselves, strong in their own opinions, never doubting anything.
The purpose of man is like the purpose of a pollywog - to wiggle along as far as he can without dying; or, to hang to life until death takes him.
In life one cannot eat his cake and have it, too; he must make his choice and then do the best he can to be content to go the way his judgment leads.
I am simply an agnostic. I haven't yet had time or opportunity to explore the universe, and I don't know what I might run on to in some nook or corner.
It’s not bad people I fear so much as good people. When a person is sure that he is good, he is nearly hopeless; he gets cruel- he believes in punishment.
I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil.
No man is a good citizen, a good neighbor, a good friend, or a good man just because he obeys the law. The intrinsic worth is determined mainly by the intrinsic make-up.
A jury is more apt to be unbiased and independent than a court, but they very seldom stand up against strong public clamor. Judges naturally believe the defendant is guilty.
The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.
I feel as I always have, that the earth is the home and the only home of man, and I am convinced that whatever he is to get out of his existence he must get while he is here.
You can't get to a pleasant place to be at unless you use pleasant methods to get there. When you are dealing with a human society the means is fully as important as the end.
I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure - that is all that agnosticism means.
Those who enjoy the emotion of hating are much like the groups who sate their thirst for blood by hunting and hounding to death helpless animals as an outlet for their emotions.
Men have always been obliged to fight to preserve liberty. Constitutions and laws do not safeguard liberty. It can be preserved only by a tolerant people, and this means eternal conflict.
The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.
The Constitution is a delusion and a snare if the weakest and humblest man in the land cannot be defended in his right to speak and his right to think as much as the strongest in the land.
It must always be remembered that all laws are naturally and inevitably evolved by the strongest force in a community, and in the last analysis made for the protection of the dominant class.
The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom.
Thirteen states with a population less than that of New York State alone can prevent repeal [of prohibition] until Halley's comet returns. One might as well talk about a summer vacation on Mars.
One believes in the truthfulness of a man because of his long experience with the man, and because the man has always told a consistent story. But no man has told so consistent a story as nature.
All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike someone they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.
The nation that would to-day disarm its soldiers and turn its people to the paths of peace would accomplish more to its building up than by all the war taxes wrong from its hostile and unwilling serfs
Every government on earth is the personification of violence and force, and yet the doctine of non-resistance is as old as human thought - even more than this, the instinct is as old as life upon the earth.
Any one who thinks is an agnostic about something, otherwise he must believe that he is possessed of all knowledge. And the proper place for such a person is in the madhouse or the home for the feeble-minded.
To say that the universe was here last year, or millions of years ago, does not explain its origin. This is still a mystery. As to the question of the origin of things, man can only wonder and doubt and guess.
Probably the undertaker thinks less of death than almost any other man. He is so accustomed to it that his mind must involuntarily turn from its horror to a contemplation of how much he makes out of the burial.
The ability and inclination to use physical strength is no indication of bravery or tenacity to life. The greatest cowards are often the greatest bullies. Nothing is cheaper and more common than physical bravery.
The consideration and kindness shown by unfortunates to each other are surprising to those who have no experience with this class of men. Often to find real sympathy you must go to those who know what misery means.
It is just as often a great misfortune to be the child of the rich as it is to be the child of the poor. Wealth has its misfortunes. Too much, too great opportunity and advantage given to a child has its misfortunes.
Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.