Thought control, like birth control, is best undertaken as long as possible before the fact. Many grown-ups will obstinately persist, read more

Thought control, like birth control, is best undertaken as long as possible before the fact. Many grown-ups will obstinately persist, if only now and then, in composing small strings of sentences in their heads and achieving at least momentary logic. This probably cannot be prevented, but we have learned how to minimize the consequences by arranging that such grown-ups will be unable to pursue that logic very far. If they were at home in the technology of writing, there's no telling how much social disorder they would cause by thinking things out at length.Our schools have chosen to cut this danger off as close to the root as possible, thus taking measures to preclude not only the birth of thought but its conception. They give the pill to even the youngest children, but just to be on the safe side, they give it to everybody else, too, especially all would-be schoolteachers.

The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man read more

The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful to truth must make himself perpetually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable renascent errors.

Of all sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.

Of all sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.

Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era read more

Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era of events. The new barbarism of the twentieth century is the echo of words bandied about by brilliant speakers and writers in the second half of the nineteenth.

But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.

It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.

Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence.

Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence.

When you learn not to want things so badly, life comes to you.

When you learn not to want things so badly, life comes to you.

A man is never more his single separate self than when he sets out on a journey.

A man is never more his single separate self than when he sets out on a journey.