If little else, the brain is an educational toy.

I never cheated an honest man, only rascals. They wanted something for nothing. I gave them nothing for something.

The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else doing it wrong, without commenting.

He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.

You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.

Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.

If a man slept by day, he had little time to work. That was a satisfying notion to Escargot.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness.

Don't guess

were found to be wearing neckwear that was tighter than their neck circumference. The visual discrimination of the 22 subjects was evaluated using a critical flicker frequency (CFF) test. Results of the CFF test indicated that tight neckwear signifi

If one inquires why the American tradition is so strong against any connection of State and Church, why it dreads even the rudiments of religious teaching in state-maintained schools, the immediate and superficial answer is not far to seek. ... The

Boston State House is the hub of the Solar System. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar.

Somewhat alarmed at the continued growth of the number of employees on the Department of Agriculture payroll in 1962, Michigan Republican Robert Griffin proposed an amendment to the farm bill so that "the total number of employees in the Department

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact...

I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and I wasn't tempted to buy

A racially integrated community is a chronological term timed from the entrance of the first black family to the exit of the last white family.

There is a secret person undamaged within every individual.

... relaxed in the manner of a man who has no need to put up a front of any kind.

Youth is a disease from which we all recover.

Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I Will Fight No More Forever.

Big book, big bore.

The shifts of Fortune test the reliability of friends.

History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too

If a man stay away from his wife for seven years, the law presumes the separation to have killed him; yet according to our daily experience, it might well prolong his life.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

I went to a Grateful Dead Concert and they played for SEVEN hours. Great song.

Certain passages in several laws have always defied interpretation and the most inexplicable must be a matter of opinion. A judge of the Court of Session of Scotland has sent the editors of this book his candidate which reads, "In the Nuts (unground

Thieves respect property; they merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

There are people who find it odd to eat four or five Chinese meals in a row; in China, I often remind them, there are a billion or so people who find nothing odd about it.

Love the sea? I dote upon it

Just remember, wherever you go, there you are.

That's always the way when you discover something new; everyone thinks you're crazy.

To lead people, you must follow behind.

Diplomacy is to do and say, the nastiest thing in the nicest way.

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around us in awareness.

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

The introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state, for styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions. ... The new style, gradually gaining a lodgement, quitely ins

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

That government is best which governs least.

It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair.

Mundus vult decipi decipiatur ergo.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

Maybe ain't ain't so correct, but I notice that lots of folks who ain't using ain't ain't eatin' well.

You know you are getting old when you think you should drive the speed limit.

The only excuse for God is that he doesn't exist.

The world has many unintentionally cruel mechanisms that are not designed for people who walk on their hands.

"Nuclear war would mean abolition of most comforts, and disruption of normal routines, for children and adults alike."

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

"I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating."

"You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they don't."

Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.

The fact that Hitler was a political genius unmasks the nature of politics in general as no other can.

The fact that it works is immaterial.

Before you ask more questions, think about whether you really want to know the answers.

Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the railroad yards."

If we see the light at the end of the tunnel, it's the light of an oncoming train.

A is for Apple.

If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!

Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.

Someday we'll look back on this moment and plow into a parked car.

It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.

Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.

I've never been hurt by anything I didn't say.

The distinction between Freedom and Liberty is not accurately known; naturalists have been unable to find a living specimen of either.

What an artist dies with me!

Maternity pay? Now every Tom, Dick and Harry will get pregnant.

If a jury in a criminal trial stays out for more than twenty-four hours, it is certain to vote acquittal, save in those instances where it votes guilty.

... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If somebody gets handed a name like "H.

Rotten wood cannot be carved.

Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

Business will be either better or worse.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is by no means the only 'certain' standard. If you mistake what is relative for something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate truth.

The term "fire" brings up visions of violence and mayhem and the ugly scene of shooting employees who make mistakes. We will now refer to this process as "deleting" an employee (much as a file is deleted from a disk). The employee is simply there o

How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?

It's easier to take it apart than to put it back together.

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

In the highest society, as well as in the lowest, woman is merely an instrument of pleasure.

In breeding cattle you need one bull for every twenty-five cows, unless the cows are known sluts.

If I were a grave-digger or even a hangman, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment.

In case of fire, stand in the hall and shout "Fire!"

Don't get mad, get even.

Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.

Hotels are tired of getting ripped off. I checked into a hotel and they had towels from my house.

Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

You have to run as fast as you can just to stay where you are. If you want to get anywhere, you'll have to run much faster.

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

Anything anybody can say about America is true.

I have just enough white in me to make my honesty questionable.

Audacity, and again, audacity, and always audacity.

The superfluous is very necessary.

If it takes a bloodbath, lets get it over with. No more appeasement.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending t

The fact that people are poor or discriminated against doesn't necessarily endow them with any special qualities of justice, nobility, charity or compassion.

Long ago I proposed that unsuccessful candidates for the Presidency be quietly hanged, as a matter of public sanitation and decorum. The sight of their grief must have a very evil effect upon the young.

We Americans, we're a simple people... but piss us off, and we'll bomb your cities.

It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.

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

Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.

I shot an arrow in to the air, and it stuck.

We have gone on piling weapon upon weapon, missile upon missile, new levels of destructiveness upon old ones. We have done this helplessly, almost involuntarily: like the victims of some sort of hypnotism, like men in a dream, like lemmings heading

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.

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

I think we are in Rats' Alley where the dead men lost their bones.

"She said, `I know you ... you cannot sing'. I said, `That's nothing, you should hear me play piano.'"

The chief enemy of creativity is "good" sense

As to Jesus of Nazareth... I think the system of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissent

The dirty work at political conventions is almost always done in the grim hours between midnight and dawn. Hangmen and politicians work best when the human spirit is at its lowest ebb.