He that bringeth a present, findeth the door open.

Don't say "yes" until I finish talking.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who has never learned to walk.

Such evil deeds could religion prompt.

Mandrell: "You know what I think?" Doctor: "Ah, ah that's a catch question. With a brain your size you don't think, right?"

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

TO THOSE OF YOU WHO DESIRE IT, I GRANT YOU MADRAK'S BLESSING: Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires for

Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore,

It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.

In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, "one when he was a boy and one when he was a man."

When, in 1964, New Hampshire Republican Senator Norris Cotton announced his support of Bary Goldwater in his state's primary election, he was questioned as to whether this indicated a change of his hitherto "liberal" political views. "Well," expla

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?

Women of genius commonly have masculine faces, figures and manners. In transplanting brains to an alien soil God leaves a little of the original earth clinging to the roots.

Higgins: Doolittle, you're either an honest man or a rogue. Doolittle: A little of both, Guv'nor. Like the rest of us, a little of both.

Those who are mentally and emotionally healthy are those who have learned when to say yes, when to say no and when to say whoopee.

In dwelling, be close to the land. In meditation, delve deep into the heart. In dealing with others, be gentle and kind. In speech, be true. In work, be competent. In action, be careful of your timing.

In good speaking, should not the mind of the speaker know the truth of the matter about which he is to speak?

Sho' they got to have it against the law. Shoot, ever'body git high, they wouldn't be nobody git up and feed the chickens. Hee-hee.

Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.

The chief enemy of creativity is "good" sense

If a thing's worth having, it's worth cheating for.

I think... I think it's in my basement... Let me go upstairs and check.

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.

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

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

"Listen to what I say, not what I mean. I mean ...."

You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

Let me take you a button-hole lower.

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes. I hope they do get 'em lowered down enough so people can afford to pay 'em.

I always say beauty is only sin deep.

I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig-headed fool.

If we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.

Laughter is the closest distance between two people.

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each tends to ascribe to the other side a consistency, fors

Once, I read that a man be never stronger than when he truly realizes how weak he is.

Why are you doing this to me? Because knowledge is torture, and there must be awareness before there is change.

You're always thinking you're gonna be the one that makes 'em act different.

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

I'm always looking for a new idea that will be more productive than its cost.

Those who do things in a noble spirit of self-sacrifice are to be avoided at all costs.

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will someday become congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves.

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

Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.

Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.

I don't have any use for bodyguards, but I do have a specific use for two highly trained certified public accountants.

Any president should have the right to shoot at least two people a year without explanation.

If you float on instinct alone, how can you calculate the buoyancy for the computed load?

If there is no wind, row.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

Great acts are made up of small deeds.

The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason that He makes so many of them.

It is better to have loved and lost

They can't stop us... we're on a mission from God!

Working with Julie Andrews is like getting hit over the head with a valentine.

I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

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

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters.

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.

If there were a school for, say, sheet metal workers, that after three years left its graduates as unprepared for their careers as does law school, it would be closed down in a minute, and no doubt by lawyers.

I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Congs.

Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.

When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.

I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.

Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.

It's not so hard to lift yourself by your bootstraps once you're off the ground.

Faith is under the left nipple.

Youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age a regret.

Some performers on television appear to be horrible people, but when you finally get to know them in person, they turn out to be even worse.

Very few people do anything creative after the age of thirty-five. The reason is that very few people do anything creative before the age of thirty-five.

Luke, I'm yer father, eh. Come over to the dark side, you hoser.

When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.

To be patriotic, hate all nations but your own; to be religious, all sects but your own; to be moral, all pretenses but your own.

Government spending? I don't know what it's all about. I don't know any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he doesn't know much.

The best case: Get salary from America, build a house in England, live with a Japanese wife, and eat Chinese food. Pretty good case: Get salary from England, build a house in America, live with a Chinese wife, and eat Japanese food. The wo

The marriage of Marxism and feminism has been like the marriage of husband and wife depicted in English common law: Marxism and feminism are one, and that one is marxism.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

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

You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.

To know Edina is to reject it.

Doctors and lawyers must go to school for years and years, often with little sleep and with great sacrifice to their first wives.

My father, a good man, told me, "Never lose your ignorance; you cannot replace it."

IV. The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken. Such an object is inevitably price

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

"Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is why he never used it."

There has been a little distress selling on the stock exchange.

The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist "Jack."

Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might

Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit. [There is no great genius without some touch of madness.]

There's no justice in this world.

She say, Miss Colie, You better hush. God might hear you. Let 'im hear me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.

Men are superior to women.

VI: A hungry dog hunts best. A hungrier dog hunts even better. VII: Decreased business base increases overhead. So does increased business base. VIII: The most unsuccessful four years in the education of a cost-estimator is fifth grade ari

For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.

REPORTER: Senator, are you for or against the MX missile system? SENATOR: Bob, the MX missile system reminds me of an old saying that the country folk in my state like to say. It goes like this: "You can carry a pig for six miles, but if you set i

Remember: Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.

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.

Charity begins at home.

Housework can kill you if done right.

The public is an old woman. Let her maunder and mumble.

Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.

The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend of both parties tactfully interferes.

Don't vote

The knowledge that makes us cherish innocence makes innocence unattainable.

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

I am myself plus my circumstance, and if I do not save it, I cannot save myself.

It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too.

She cried, and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook.

Nothing succeeds like excess.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war, no matter whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterwards whether he told the truth or not. When starting and waging war it is not right that matters, but victory.

Inglish Spocken Hier: some mangled translations Sign on a cathedral in Spain: It is forbidden to enter a woman, even a foreigner if dressed as a man. Above the enterance to a Cairo bar: Unaccompanied ladies not admitted unless with husb

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

Concerning the war in Vietnam, Senator George Aiken of Vermount noted in January, 1966, "I'm not very keen for doves or hawks. I think we need more owls."

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

The hater of property and of government takes care to have his warranty deed recorded, and the book written against fame and learning has the author's name on the title page.

If I made peace with Russia today, I'd only attack her again tomorrow. I just couldn't help myself.

Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.

Ignorance is never out of style. It was in fashion yesterday, it is the rage today, and it will set the pace tomorrow.

To every Ph.D. there is an equal and opposite Ph.D.

They also serve who only stand and wait.

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.

When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find anyone. Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains, two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge. Never in the history of war have s

Absolutum obsoletum. (If it works, it's out of date.)

They're giving bank robbing a bad name.

All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers ... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

Never buy what you do not want because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.

Imagine what we can imagine!

You can never do just one thing.

The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.

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.

Canada Post doesn't really charge 32 cents for a stamp. It's 2 cents for postage and 30 cents for storage.

The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired warranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by changing the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped marker.

He liked fishing a little too much, and he believed that work was something a man did when he had to. He had always been able to get along well enough without it, especially for the last couple of years.

Art is Nature speeded up and God slowed down.

Live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse.

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.

Cold is God's way of teling us to burn more Catholics.

What a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

If you keep your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a lot of rubbish into it.

If you cannot convince them, confuse them.

If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.

With all the talent around, it's sort of amazing that a woman could be up here with us.

The pollution's at that awkward stage. Too thick to navigate and too thin to cultivate.

The only cultural advantage LA has over NY is that you can make a right turn on a red light.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

Rascal, am I? Take THAT!

Indiana is a state dedicated to basketball. Basketball, soybeans, hogs and basketball. Berkeley, needless to say, is not nearly as athletic. Berkeley is dedicated to coffee, angst, potholes and coffee.

It's a recession when your neighbour loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.

Live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so.

Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while they're alive.

Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair, hot wench in flame-colored taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to

"You mean, if you allow the master to be uncivil, to treat you any old way he likes, and to insult your dignity, then he may deem you fit to hear his view of things?" "Quite the contrary. You must defend your integrity, assuming you have integrit

A drama critic is a person who surprises a playwright by informing him what he meant.

There is more to life than increasing its speed.

I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs.

No house should ever be on any hill or on anything. It should be of the hill, belonging to it.

We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glowworm.

People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.

"Why are we importing all these highbrow plays like `Amadeus'? I could have told you Mozart was a jerk for nothing."

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree on.

I went to my mother and told her I intended to commence a different life. I asked for and obtained her blessing and at once commenced the career of a robber.

Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.

Perhaps the remembrance of these things will prove a source of future pleasure.

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

I wish a robot would get elected president. That way, when he came to town, we could all take a shot at him and not feel too bad.

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom for trying to change the system from within. I'm coming now I'm coming to reward them. First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin. I'm guided by a signal in the heavens. I'm guided by this birthmark

Two heads are better than one.

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.

Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

Words have a longer life than deeds.

My dear People. My dear Bagginses and Boffins, and my dear Tooks and Brandybucks, and Grubbs, and Chubbs, and Burrowses, and Hornblowers, and Bolgers, Bracegirdles, Goodbodies, Brockhouses and Proudfoots. Also my good Sackville Bagginses that I w

Liberty don't work as good in practice as it does in speeches.

Objectivity is to a newspaper what virtue is to a woman.

The state of innocence contains the germs of all future sin.

Drop the vase and it will become a Ming of the past.

A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

And what accomplished villains these old engineers were! What diabolical ways to sabotage they found! Nikolai Karlovich von Meck, of the People's Comissariat of Railroads ... would hold forth for hours on end about the economic problems involved in

While we are sleeping, two-thirds of the world is plotting to do us in.

Justice is incidental to law and order.

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

It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon. Which raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody not to.

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.

Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop writing.

To be is to be related.

CF&C stole it, fair and square.

Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman.

If you laid all of our laws end to end, there would be no end.

I think the world is run by C students.

America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization.

I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

[District Attorneys] learn in District Attorney School that there are two sure-fire ways to get a lot of favorable publicity: (1) Go down and raid all the lockers in the local high school and confiscate 53 marijuana cigarettes and put them in a

And they mainly want to teach them not to question, not to imagine, but to be obedient and behave well so that they can hold them forever as children to their bosom as the second millennium lurches toward its panicky close.

No matter whether th' constitution follows th' flag or not, th' supreme court follows th' iliction returns.

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

Maryel brought her bat into Exit once and started whacking people on the dance floor. Now everyone's doing it. It's called grand slam dancing.

Shame is an improper emotion invented by pietists to oppress the human race.

an idiot politically. But the designations may be good business for war veterans. Having bled for their country in 1861 and 1918, they have bled it all they could consequently. And why not?"

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.

I used to be disgusted, now I find I'm just amused.

The smallest worm will turn being trodden on.

I will make you shorter by the head.

Death is a spirit leaving a body, sort of like a shell leaving the nut behind.

Diplomacy is the art of letting the other party have things your way.

Wait for that wisest of all counselors, Time.

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.

"Ubi non accusator, ibi non judex." (Where there is no police, there is no speed limit.)

Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked down upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.

Robert Kennedy's 1964 Senatorial campaign planners told him that their intention was to present him to the television viewers as a sincere, generous person. "You going to use a double?" asked Kennedy. Thumbing through a promotional pamphlet prep

The scum also rises.

"It don't matter, Sail, ... Could be worse. The fam'ly might be donatin' the proceeds to the Cath'lic Church, or the Mormons or somethin'. One cult's the same another."

I'm glad I was not born before tea.

Evil is that which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.

He who despises himself nevertheless esteems himself as a self-despiser.

When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours."

There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can ever be made.

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

Satire is tragedy plus time.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom.

Our sires' age was worse that our grandsires'. We their sons are more worthless than they: so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.

Hope not, lest ye be disappointed.

I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, such as "certainly", "

I go the way that Providence dictates.

It is ridiculous to call this an industry. This is not. This is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I'll kill 'em, and I'm going to kill 'em before they kill me. You're talking about the American way of survival of the fittest.

"MOKE DAT YIGARETTE"

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.

I consider a new device or technology to have been culturally accepted when it has been used to commit a murder.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them WHAT to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

The coast was clear.

The old complaint that mass culture is designed for eleven-year-olds is of course a shameful canard. The key age has traditionally been more like fourteen.

Walking on water wasn't built in a day.

He who fears the unknown may one day flee from his own backside.

Plots are like girdles. Hidden, they hold your interest; revealed, they're of no interest except to fetishists. Like girdles, they attempt to contain an uncontainable experience.

The future is a race between education and catastrophe.

"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?"

HR 3128. Omnibus Budget Reconciliation, Fiscal 1986. Martin, R-Ill., motion that the House recede from its disagreement to the Senate amendment making changes in the bill to reduce fiscal 1986 deficits. The Senate amendment was an amendment to the

Pilfering Treasury property is paticularly dangerous: big thieves are ruthless in punishing little thieves.

It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east laden with long lances, sharp swords, and death-dealing hangovers. The thousands were led by Arrowroot, who sat limply in his sidesaddle, nursing a whopper. Goodgulf, Gimlet, and the r

I try to keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall out.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

My father was a creole, his father a Negro, and his father a monkey; my family, it seems, begins where yours left off.

If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.

Judges, as a class, display, in the matter of arranging alimony, that reckless generosity which is found only in men who are giving away someone else's cash.

Even if you persuade me, you won't persuade me.

The means-and-ends moralists, or non-doers, always end up on their ends without any means.

If God wanted us to have a President, He would have sent us a candidate.

"You would do well not to imagine profundity," he said. "Anything that seems of momentous occasion should be dwelt upon as though it were of slight note. Conversely, trivialities must be attended to with the greatest of care. Because death is moment

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

Liberals are the first to dump you if you con them or get into trouble. Conservatives are better. They never run out on you.

The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.

"World conquerors sometimes become fools, but fools never become world conquerors."

We are going to give a little something, a few little years more, to socialism, because socialism is defunct. It dies all by itself. The bad thing is that socialism, being a victim of its ... Did I say socialism?

A sinking ship gathers no moss.

My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.

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

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sl

The Least Successful Defrosting Device The all-time record here is held by Mr. Peter Rowlands of Lancaster whose lips became frozen to his lock in 1979 while blowing warm air on it. "I got down on my knees to breathe into the lock. Somehow my lips

... we must not judge the society of the future by considering whether or not we should like to live in it; the question is whether those who have grown up in it will be happier than those who have grown up in our society or those of the past.

The eye is a menace to clear sight, the ear is a menace to subtle hearing, the mind is a menace to wisdom, every organ of the senses is a menace to its own capacity. ... Fuss, the god of the Southern Ocean, and Fret, the god of the Northern Ocean, h

Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.

What a bonanza! An unknown beginner to be directed by Lubitsch, in a script by Wilder and Brackett, and to play with Paramount's two superstars, Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert, and to be beaten up by both of them!

You roll my log, and I will roll yours.

A woman employs sincerity only when every other form of deception has failed.

[Americans] are a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.

Satire is what closes Saturday night.

"There is a God, but He drinks"

Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent.

God shows his contempt for wealth by the kind of person he selects to receive it.

I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.

Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

He who walks on burning coals is sure to get burned.

Just as most issues are seldom black or white, so are most good solutions seldom black or white. Beware of the solution that requires one side to be totally the loser and the other side to be totally the winner. The reason there are two sides to be

When I first arrived in this country I had only fifteen cents in my pocket and a willingness to compromise.

If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when the're reading to themselves.

Never buy from a rich salesman.

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

We should have a Vollyballocracy. We elect a six-pack of presidents. Each one serves until they screw up, at which point they rotate.

Well, I'm disenchanted too. We're all disenchanted.

You can always pick up your needle and move to another groove.

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.

A statesman is a politician who's been dead 10 or 15 years.

He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.

It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.

Political history is far too criminal a subject to be a fit thing to teach children.

Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all.

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

If I cannot bend Heaven, I shall move Hell.

There is only one word for aid that is genuinely without strings, and that word is blackmail.

You shouldn't wallow in self-pity. But it's OK to put your feet in it and swish them around a little.

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.

Yield to Temptation ... it may not pass your way again.

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

I would have made a good pope.

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.

A game can by God repent or we'll punish it. That's how they did it in Salem in the seventeenth century, and that's how we'll do it now.

Why does a hearse horse snicker, hauling a lawyer away?

Wisdom is knowing what to do with what you know.

... a thing called Ethics, whose nature was confusing but if you had it you were a High-Class Realtor and if you hadn't you were a shyster, a piker and a fly-by-night. These virtues awakened Confidence and enabled you to handle Bigger Propositions.

The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.

To defend the Saigon regime is not worth one more human life.

Youth is a disease from which we all recover.

Must I hold a candle to my shames?

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the

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

The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we own.

In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one of the risks he takes.

Nothing endures but change.

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

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne we

Let's do it.

The price of success in philosophy is triviality.

Hard reality has a way of cramping your style.

Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked down upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.

Patience is a minor form of despair, disguised as virtue.

What is good? Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? Everything that is born of weakness. Not contentedness but more power; not peace but war; not virtue but fitness. The weak and the

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

Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.

Too clever is dumb.

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

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".

It'll be just like Beggars' Canyon back home.

The rights you have are the rights given you by this Committee [the House Un-American Activities Committee]. We will determine what rights you have and what rights you have not got.

This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force.

We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.

"Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science."

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

Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.

Good salesmen and good repairmen will never go hungry.

Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.

A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved.

He jests at scars who never felt a wound.

What luck for the rulers that men do not think.

Lord, defend me from my friends; I can account for my enemies.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

Never laugh at live dragons.

When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.