For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe… Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth–that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.