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Anyone taken as an individual, is tolerably sensible and reasonable- as a member of a crowd, he at once becomes a blockhead.

The sort of dependence that results from exchange, i.e., from commercial transactions, is a reciprocal dependence. We cannot be dependent upon a foreigner without his being dependent on us. Now, this is what constitutes the very essence of society. To sever natural interrelations is not to make oneself independent, but to isolate oneself completely.

The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.

Morality, thou deadly bane,Thy tens o' thousands thou has slain!

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

It is the test of a good religion whether you can make a joke about it.

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called, ''Keep tomorrow dark,'' and which is also named ''Cheat the Prophet.'' The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.

If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.

Humiliating to human pride as it may be, we must recognize that the advance and even the preservation of civilization are dependent upon a maximum of opportunity for accidents to happen.

It is only because the majority opinion will always be opposed by some that our knowledge and understanding progress. In the process by which opinion is formed, it is very probable that, by the time any view becomes a majority view, it is no longer the best view: somebody will already have advanced beyond the point which the majority have reached. It is because we do not yet which of the many competing new opinions will prove itself the best that we wait until it has gained sufficient support.

...it is always from a minority acting in ways different from what the majority would prescribe that the majority in the end learns to do better.

A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every other fact in the universe, and that is how you can tell whether it is or is not a fact. A lie will not fit anything except another lie.

If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.

There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.

Credulity is belief in slight evidence, with no evidence, or against evidence.

The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made them, high or lowly, and ordered their estate.

It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while wolves remain of a different opinion.

Man can be chained, but he cannot be domesticated.

The test of civilization is the estimate of woman. Among savages she is a slave. In the dark ages of Christianity she is a toy and a sentimental goddess. With increasing moral light, and greater liberty, and more universal justice, she begins to develop as an equal human being.