The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity. To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task.

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.

A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.

The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.

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

Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.

The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here.

English literature's performing flea.

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.

Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to puree of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunc

No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.

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

An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.

Life is a concentration camp. You're stuck here and there's no way out and you can only rage impotently against your persecutors.

Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age.

Talkers are no good doers.

The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

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

Age before beauty; and pearls before swine.

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

Tallulah Bankhead barged down the Nile last night as Cleopatra and sank.

Once harm has been done, even a fool understands it.

There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor, Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and love of the Fatherland.

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.

"My country, right or wrong" is a thing that no patriot would think of saying, except in a desperate case. It is like saying "My mother, drunk or sober."

... 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 USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobb

"I'm in Pittsburgh. Why am I here?"

It is through symbols that man consciously or unconsciously lives, works and has his being.

You can build a throne out of bayonets, but you can't sit on it for very long.

All the waters of the earth are in the armpit of the Great Frog.

"Is it just me, or does anyone else read `bible humpers' every time someone writes `bible thumpers?'

There's small choice in rotten apples.

Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him.

The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

We have reason to be afraid. This is a terrible place.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

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

The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the number of participants.

Have you ever stopped to think what it would be like to have a woman President? "I can't deal with the Russians today. Not now. I've got my period."

Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals. To actual women it is merely a good excuse not to play football.

"I understand this is your first dead client," Sabian was saying. The absurdity of the statement made me want to laugh but they don't call me Deadpan Allie and lie.

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: Who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: Who does not obey shall not eat.

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

Traveling through hyperspace isn't like dusting crops, boy.

The whole world is a scab. The point is to pick it constructively.

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

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

The mome rath isn't born that could outgrabe me.

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

Business will be either better or worse.

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

Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

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

A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!

Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.

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

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be President, but they don't want them to become politicians in the process.

When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder.

Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her birth.

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.

Not all who own a harp are harpers.

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations. He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the Jordan, then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an open market. If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarri

The meek shall inherit the earth, but *not* its mineral rights.

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

Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential death in which its

If you do not think about the future, you cannot have one.

I BET WHAT HAPPENED was they discovered fire and invented the wheel on the same day. Then that night, they burned the wheel.

If you want to know what god thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.

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

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

If you sell diamonds, you cannot expect to have many customers. But a diamond is a diamond even if there are no customers.

There is much Obi-Wan did not tell you.

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

"I'd like to start a new religion. One that doesn't use a dead young man as its logo."

There are two kinds of pedestrians... the quick and the dead.

All kings is mostly rapscallions.

What one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.

The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.

Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion.

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

One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course, simply amazing. God is a

Eeny, Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak!

In regards to Oral Roberts' claim that God told him that he would die unless he received $20 million by March, God's lawyers have stated that their client has not spoken with Roberts for several years. Off the record, God has stated that "If I had w

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

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

When I saw a sign on the freeway that said, "Los Angeles 445 miles," I said to myself, "I've got to get out of this lane."

Things are not always what they seem.