If you want to be noticed, dress the part.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. . . Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
We may define "faith" as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith. " We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups, substitute different emotions.
Envy was one of the most potent causes of unhappiness.
I believe four ingredients are necessary for happiness: health, warm personal relations, sufficient means to keep you from want, and successful work.
We all know about love, faith, sadness, despair, hope, hopelessness, longing, desire. . . those are things we all have inside of us, and that's what my songs are about. . . what it means to be a human being.
You never quite know what's going to strike your imagination, or something that won't going to leave you alone, not going to leave alone, and this was one for me.
The commands of democracy are as imperative as its privileges and opportunities are wide and generous. Its compulsion is upon us.
If I should die, I have left no immortal work behind me — nothing to make my friends proud of my memory — but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remembered.