"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

"No elaboration of physical or moral accomplishment can atone for the sin of parasitism."

"In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness."

"The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes."

"The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man."

"He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of it."

"Riches and Art are spurious receipts for the production of Happiness and Beauty."

"Happiness and Beauty are by-products."

"In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god: everybody worships him and nobody does his will."

"Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices."

"Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it..."

"Obedience simulates subordination as fear of the police simulates honesty."

"Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality."

"Beware of the man whose god is in the skies."

"There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones."

"It is not necessary to replace a guillotined criminal: it is necessary to replace a guillotined social system."

"When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. The distinction between Crime and Justice is no greater."

"Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men."

"The man who has graduated from the flogging block at Eton to the bench from which he sentences the garrotter to be flogged is the same social product as the garrotter who has been kicked by his father and cuffed by his mother until he has grown strong enough to throttle and rob the rich citizen whose money he desires."

"No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot."

"Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation."

"The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parent's first duty."

"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry."

"Where equality is undisputed, so also is subordination."

"The duke inquires contemptuously whether his gamekeeper is the equal of the Astronomer Royal; but he insists that they shall both be hanged equally if they murder him."

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."

"He who confuses political liberty with freedom and political equality with similarity has never thought for five minutes about either."

"Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

"If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a foot-rule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved."

"Do not do unto others as you would expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same."

"Economy is the art of making the most of life. The love of economy is the root of all virtue."

"The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error."

"The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them."

"There is no love sincerer than the love of food."

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."

"Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes."

"Geniuses are horrid, intolerant, easily offended, sleeplessly self-conscious men, who expect their wives to be angels with no further business in life than to pet and worship their husbands. Even at the best they are not comfortable men to live with; and a perfect husband is one who is perfectly comfortable to live with."

"Composers are not human; They can live on diminished sevenths, and be contented with a pianoforte for a wife, and a string quartet for a family."

"A man's own self is the last person to believe in him, and is harder to cheat than the rest of the world."

"I hate singers, a miserable crew who think that music exists only in their own throats."

"Perhaps woman's art is of woman's life a thing apart, 'tis man's whole existence; just as love is said to be the reverse — though it isn't."

"If you leave your art, the world will beat you back to it. The world has not an ambition worth sharing, or a prize worth handling. Corrupt successes, disgraceful failures, or sheeplike vegetation are all it has to offer. I prefer Art, which gives me a sixth sense of beauty, with self-respect: perhaps also an immortal reputation in return for honest endeavour in a labour of love."

"All very fine, Mary; but my old-fashioned common sense is better than your clever modern nonsense."

"There are some men who are considered quite ugly, but who are more remarkable than pretty people. You often see that in artists."

"The public want actresses, because they think all actresses bad. They don't want music or poetry because they know that both are good. So actors and actresses thrive and poets and composers starve."

"The way to deal with worldly people is to frighten them by repeating their scandalous whisperings aloud."

"This craving for bouquets by Jews is a symptom of racial degeneration. The Jews are worse than my own people. Those Jews who still want to be the chosen race (chosen by the late Lord Balfour) can go to Palestine and stew in their own juice. The rest had better stop being Jews and start being human beings."

"This is the real enemy, the invader from the East, the Druze, the ruffian, the oriental parasite; in a word: the Jew."

"Assassination is the extreme form of censorship; and it seems hard to justify an incitement to it on anti-censorial principles."