“Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble?Making life means makingtrouble. There’s only one way of escaping trouble; and that’s killing things.”

“Making Life means making trouble”

“Suppose the world were only one of God's jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?”

“THE QUESTION seems a hopeless one after 2000 years of resoluteadherence to the old cry of “Not this man, but Barabbas.”Yet it is beginning to look as if Barabbas was a failure, inspite of his strong right hand, his victories, his empires, hismillions of money, and his moralities and churches and politicalconstitutions. “This man” has not been a failure yet;for nobody has ever been sane enough to try his way. But hehas had one quaint triumph. Barabbas has stolen his nameand taken his cross as a standard. There is a sort of complimentin that. There is even a sort of loyalty in it, like that ofthe brigand who breaks every law and yet claims to be apatriotic subject of the king who makes them. We have alwayshad a curious feeling that though we crucified Christon a stick, he somehow managed to get hold of the right endof it, and that if we were better men we might try his plan.There have been one or two grotesque attempts at it by inadequate people, such as the Kingdom of God in Munster,which was ended by crucifixion so much more atrocious thanthe one on Calvary that the bishop who took the part ofAnnas went home and died of horror. But responsible peoplehave never made such attempts. The moneyed, respectable,capable world has been steadily anti-Christian andBarabbasque since the crucifixion; and the specific doctrineof Jesus has not in all that time been put into political orgeneral social practice.”

“My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.”

“It is not pleasure that makes life worth living. It is life that makes pleasure worth having.”

“I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.”