“All great truths begin as blasphemies.”

“Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.”

“The truth sticks in our throats with all the sauces it is served with: it will never go down until we take it without any sauce at all.”

“Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one's heart; but death is a splendid thing—a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.”

“People do not become great by doing great things. They do great things because they are great.”

“But whether the risks to which liberty exposes us are moral or physical our right to liberty involves the right to run them. A man who is not free to risk his neck as an aviator or his soul as a heretic is not free at all; and the right to liberty begins, not at the age of 21 years but 21 seconds.”

“When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.”