The artist is not a reporter, but a Great Teacher. It is not his business to depict the world as it is, but as it ought to be.

The average man doesn’t want to be free. He wants to be safe.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. H. L.

The best years are the forties; after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy." H. L.

The business man, in fact, acquiesces in this assumption of his inferiority, even when he protests against it. He is the only man who is forever apologising for his occupation.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals. H. L.

The chief business of the nation, as a nation, is the setting up of heroes, mainly bogus.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore. H. L.

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated. H. L.

The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.