Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.

A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.

As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.

Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.

A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.

At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.

Four legs good, two legs bad.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.

The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.