Bankruptcies of governments have, on the whole, done less harm to mankind than their ability to raise loans.

Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow.

A society which reverences the attainment of riches as the supreme felicity will naturally be disposed to regard the poor as damned ... if only to justify itself for making their life a hell.

Clever men are impressed in their differences from their fellows. Wise men are conscious of their resemblance to them.

It is probable that democracy owes more to nonconformity than to any other single movement.

Private property is a necessary institution, at least in a fallen world; men work more and dispute less when goods are private than when they are in common.

An erring colleague is not an Amalkite to be smitten hip and thigh.

The characteristic virtue of Englishmen is power of sustained practical activity and their characteristic vice a reluctance to test the quality of that activity by reference to principles.

When men have gone so far as to talk as though their idols have come to life, it is time that someone broke them.

The certainties of one age are the problems of the next.

Virtues are often conquered by vices, but their rout is most complete when it is inflicted by other virtues, more militant, more efficient, or more congenial.

The desire to love someone always exceeds the desire to be loved by someone & that's exactly why we end up loving the person who doesn't deserve that LOVE.

She filled herself entirely with the molten dark.

Miserliness is the one vice that grows stronger with increasing years. It yields its sordid pleasures to the end.

Anyone can make them cry, but it takes a genius to make them laugh.

I have the freedom to do what I want... bright people to talk to every day.

My mother passed when I was in the third grade, my father when I was in the seventh, and that's when I was shipped to Los Angeles to live with an aunt.

Stardom isn't a profession, it's an accident.

I've had to realize I need to distance myself a bit from relying on the feedback. I think it's wonderful but can also be poison. You don't want to buy into it too much.

To me, being a gangster was better than being President of the United States.

If a young man at the age of twenty-three can write a symphony like that, in five years he will be ready to commit murder.