If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.

Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

People all over the nation are starved for honesty and common sense.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?

Look at the stars and not down at your own feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in few words

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.

Common sense is the very antipodes of science.

The right to free speech is more important than the content of the speech.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism… The one absolutely certain way of brining this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences.

Anarchy, anarchy! Show me a greater evil! This is why cities tumble and the houses rain down, this is what scatters armies!

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really man it.

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

When civil fury first grew high, and men fell out they knew not why.

Racism must be opposed by all means that humanity has at its disposal.

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government—lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.

Those who would administer wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one of the serious obstacles in the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity.

It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.

I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.

I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.

The way you habitually think will determine your destiny.

The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness.

No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot.

Drink does not drown care, but waters it, and makes it grow faster.

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.

Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man’s task.

There are only two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it.