“We tend today to exaggerate the effectiveness of persuasion as a means of inculcating opinion and shaping behavior. …Actually the fabulous effects ascribed to propaganda have no greater foundation in fact than the fall of the walls of Jericho ascribed to the blast of Joshua's trumpets.”

“Repute is never transmitted with certainty; all things that she reports are exaggerated. Even our glory, although it rests on a solid foundation, is greater in name than in fact.”
Numquam ad liquidum fama perducitur; omnia illa tradente maiora sunt vero. Nostra quoque gloria, cum sit ex solido, plus tamen habet nominis quam operis.

“Walls protect and walls limit. It is in the nature of walls that they should fall. That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet.”

“We fall short when we ascribe all the modes of happiness to walking in paths of rectitude. There are joys which only tramps and thieves know.”

“Despite the severity of their punishments, religions have still consistently failed in virtually all attempts to curtail criminal behavior, and have in fact actually empowered or promoted criminality in many ways. More reasonable laws are usually more effective.”

“I view life as a fortuitous collaboration ascribable to the fact that one finds oneself at the right place at the same time.”

“I would in fact tend to have more confidence in the outcome of a democratic decision if there was a minority that voted against it, than if it was unanimous… Social psychology has amply shown the strength of this bandwagon effect.”

“One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.”

“Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.

Love is a friendship set to music.”

“There is no part of the means placed in the hands of the Executive which might be used with greater effect for unhallowed purposes than the control of the public press.”