more dangerous than ignorance.

Activity is the only road to knowledge.

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

No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.

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

Do not give your children moral and religious instruction unless you are
quite sure they will not take it too seriously. Better be the mother of
Henri Quatre and Nell Gwynne than of Robespierre and Queen Mary Tudor.

MARRIAGE

Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with
the maximum of opportunity.

Marriage is the only legal contract which abrogates as between the
parties all the laws that safeguard the particular relation to which it
refers.

The essential function of marriage is the continuance of the race, as
stated in the Book of Common Prayer.

The accidental function of marriage is the gratification of the
amoristic sentiment of mankind.

The artificial sterilization of marriage makes it possible for marriage
to fulfill its accidental function whilst neglecting its essential one.

The most revolutionary invention of the XIX century was the artificial
sterilization of marriage.

Any marriage system which condemns a majority of the population to
celibacy will be violently wrecked on the pretext that it outrages
morality.

Polygamy, when tried under modern democratic conditions, as by the
Mormons, is wrecked by the revolt of the mass of inferior men who are
condemned to celibacy by it; for the maternal instinct leads a woman to
prefer a tenth share in a first rate man to the exclusive possession of
a third rate one. Polyandry has not been tried under these conditions.

The minimum of national celibacy (ascertained by dividing the number of
males in the community by the number of females, and taking the quotient
as the number of wives or husbands permitted to each person) is secured
in England (where the quotient is 1) by the institution of monogamy.

The modern sentimental term for the national minimum of celibacy is
Purity.

Marriage, or any other form of promiscuous amoristic monogamy, is fatal
to large States because it puts its ban on the deliberate breeding of
man as a political animal.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

All scoundrelism is summed up in the phrase "Que Messieurs les Assassins
commencen