The good thing about the country is ... that we don't have there any bad weather at all-only a number of different kinds of good.

There is no conceivable human action which custom has not at one time justified and at another condemned.

The grand paradox of our society is this: we magnify man's rights but we minimize his capacities.

The impulse to mar and to destroy is as ancient and almost as nearly universal as the impulse to create. The one is an easier way than the other of demonstrating power.

In history as it comes to be written, there is usually some Spirit of the Age which historians can define, but the shape of things is seldom so clear to those who live them. To most thoughtful men it has generally seemed that theirs was an Age of Confusion.

Though we face the facts of sex we are more reluctant than ever to face the fact of death or the crueler facts of life, either biological or social.

The most prevalent opinion among our so confused contemporaries seems to be that tomorrow will be wonderful-that is, unless it is indescribably terrible, or unless indeed there just isn't any.

Whenever man forgets that man is an animal, the result is always to make him less humane.

The most important part of our lives-our sensations, emotions, desires, and aspirations-takes place in a universe of illusions which science can attenuate or destroy, but which it is powerless to enrich.

Two-legged creatures we are supposed to love as well as we love ourselves. The four-legged, also, can come to seem pretty important. But six legs are too many from the human standpoint.