Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment of Christianity has been upon trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity,; in both, superstition, bigo

Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.

Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Any philosophy that can be put "in a nutshell" belongs there.

"Remember, if it's being done correctly, here or abroad, it's ___not the U.S. Army doing it!"

No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day.

If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.

Brahma said: Well, after hearing ten thousand explanations, a fool is no wiser. But an intelligent man needs only two thousand five hundred.

"I wonder", he said to himself, "what's in a book while it's closed. Oh, I know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people I don't know yet

Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?

The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.

The human brain is a wonderful thing. It starts working the moment you are born, and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.

Two heads are better than one.

People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.

Better late than never.

Your wig steers the gig.

The two oldest professions in the world have been ruined by amateurs.

What on earth would a man do with himself if something did not stand in his way?

By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.

There appears to be irrefutable evidence that the mere fact of overcrowding induces violence.

Don't vote

Were there no women, men might live like gods.

You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt.

We are governed not by armies and police but by ideas.

Life is one long struggle in the dark.

Charity begins at home.

Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of Communists and other subversives. We intend to clean them out, even if it means rounding up every bird watcher in the country.

Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.

Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.

When I hear a man applauded by the mob I always feel a pang of pity for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.

When a man you like switches from what he said a year ago, or four years ago, he is a broad-minded man who has courage enough to change his mind with changing conditions. When a man you don't like does it, he is a liar who has broken his promises.

Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.

What an author likes to write most is his signature on the back of a cheque.

The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo! now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished.

Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.

I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole.

If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.

There is no comfort without pain; thus we define salvation through suffering.

It is convenient that there be gods, and, as it is convenient, let us believe there are.

If happiness is in your destiny, you need not be in a hurry.

Every country has the government it deserves.

Chance is perhaps the work of God when He did not want to sign.

Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I'm the only person standing between Nixon and the White House.

The Hollywood tradition I like best is called "sucking up to the stars."

It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.

The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of a military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and private wealth was cons

Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick your hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well as Mental Anguish. You would sue: * The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions

If people say that here and there someone has been taken away and maltreated, I can only reply: You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

If reporters don't know that truth is plural, they ought to be lawyers.

It has long been noticed that juries are pitiless for robbery and full of indulgence for infanticide. A question of interest, my dear Sir! The jury is afraid of being robbed and has passed the age when it could be a victim of infanticide.

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities, requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm into a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbing problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by tur

The road to Hades is easy to travel.

It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it.

Love your neighbour, yet don't pull down your hedge.

Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.

Work is the crab grass in the lawn of life.

So little time, so little to do.

"... I should explain that I was wearing a black velvet cape that was supposed to make me look like the dashing, romantic Zorro but which actually made me look like a gigantic bat wearing glasses ..."

Forgive your enemies, but don't forget their names.

No man's ambition has a right to stand in the way of performing a simple act of justice.

I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know some people are terrified of the bomb. But then some people are terrified to be seen carrying a modern screen magazine. Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.

... the privileged being which we call human is distinguished from other animals only by certain double-edged manifestations which in charity we can only call "inhuman."

The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

All phone calls are obscene.

They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

I hate quotations.

Lansdale seized on the idea of using Nixon to build support for the [Vietnamese] elections ... really honest elections, this time. "Oh, sure, honest, yes, that's right," Nixon said, "so long as you win!" With that he winked, drove his elbow into La

I'll never get off this planet.

Let him choose out of my files, his projects to accomplish.

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies.

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein.

I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike.

The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it.

The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.

No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he had only had good intentions. He had money as well.

NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Giuseppe? Everything he says is wrong. GIUSEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says will be right.

'Naomi, sex at noon taxes.' I moan. Never odd or even. A man, a plan, a canal, Panama. Madam, I'm Adam. Sit on a potato pan, Otis. Sit on Otis.

Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.

I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the kind of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled substances being in widespread use. Back then, there were no restrictions, in terms of talent, on who could make

Small things make base men proud.

There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet.

Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?

Art is Nature speeded up and God slowed down.

A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I believe everything positively stinks.

We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.

It is annoying to be honest to no purpose.

Another such victory over the Romans, and we are undone.

Yes, I've now got this nice little apartment in New York, one of those L-shaped ones. Unfortunately, it's a lower case l.

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?

If little else, the brain is an educational toy.

Getting into trouble is easy.

Bullwinkle: You just leave that to my pal. He's the brains of the outfit. General: What does that make YOU? Bullwinkle: What else? An executive.

Fraud is the homage that force pays to reason.

IF I HAD A MINE SHAFT, I don't think I would just abandon it. There's got to be a better way.

It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.

If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin' it, even if they don't know what it means.

"Jesus saves...but Gretzky gets the rebound!"

Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.

Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree."

Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of dollars: For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your tax return around under your armpit. No IRS ag

We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should govern their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the center of their spiritual universe, nor Hebrews that Mohammed is a major prohpet, nor Christians that Shinto

Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?

Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around with royal-blue chickens.

Well begun is half done.

As long as I am mayor of this city [Jersey City, New Jersey] the great industries are secure. We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Comm