The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.

There is no passion like that of a functionary for his function.

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.

[He was] a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.

It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.

Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him.

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.