When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest.

It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new

Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis

When a man is treated like a beast, he says, 'After all, I'm human.' When he behaves like a beast, he says 'After all, I'm only human.'

Squeeze human nature into the straitjacket of criminal justice and crime will appear

A weak man has doubts before a decision; a strong man has them afterwards

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden

Artists have a right to be modest and a duty to be vain

The agitator seizes the world. The artist is seized by it

The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater distance from which it looks back

The real truths are those that can be invented

An illusion of depth often occurs if a blockhead is a muddlehead at the same time

How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read

Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work

Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer

The mission of the press is to spread culture while destroying the attention span

Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match

Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave