My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious.

Democracy

Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.

Education

Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.

Irony

Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves.

Learning

Do not learn more than you absolutely need to get through life.

Morality

Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.

Progress

Progress celebrates victories over nature. Progress makes purses out of human skin. When people were traveling in mail coaches, the world got ahead better than it does now that salesmen fly through the air. What good is speed if the brain has oozed out on the way? How will the heirs of this age be taught the most basic motions that are necessary to activate the most complicated machines? Nature can rely on progress; it will avenge it for the outrage it has perpetrated on it.

Writers and Writing

This is something that I cannot get over -- that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character.