We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.

The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic.

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

Some men see things as they are, and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not.

The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things.

Creation is a miracle of daily recurrence. ‘A miracle a minute’ would not be a bad slogan for God.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.

Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.

I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.