Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

"There is a God, but He drinks"

A casual stroll through a lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

Don't be humble ... you're not that great.

The price of success in philosophy is triviality.

I am a man: nothing human is alien to me.

It was a female that drove me to drink and I didn't even have the kindness to thank her.

The farther you go, the less you know.

If Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is not by some means abridged, it will soon fall into disuse.

Call on God, but row away from the rocks.

I reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in New England, but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, fo

We're all in this alone.

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

He jests at scars who never felt a wound.

Dying is easy. Comedy is difficult.

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

I might have gone to West Point, but I was too proud to speak to a congressman.

To teach is to learn twice.

There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell

Ignorance is the Mother of Devotion.

Genius is pain.

Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.

An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.

Don't go to bed with no price on your head.

"Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich."

I didn't believe in reincarnation in any of my other lives. I don't see why I should have to believe in it in this one.

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.

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."

There are a lot of lies going around.... and half of them are true.

Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. You use them when you've got nothing else to try. If they work, they go in the Book. Otherwise you follow the Book, which is largely a collection of nitwit ideas that worked.

Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.

You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down.

Fortune Documents the Great Legal Decisions: We think that we may take judicial notice of the fact that the term "bitch" may imply some feeling of endearment when applied to a female of the canine species but that it is seldom, if ever, so used whe

Man is a military animal, glories in gunpowder, and loves parade.

I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.

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,

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

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

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed i

Zero Mostel: That's it baby! When you got it, flaunt it! Flaunt it!

Never take a resume seriously. Resumes only make money for the people who write the resumes. No resume ever tells an employer how many times a job applicant has had the clap. Why, indeed, would anyone hire a person based on a resume written by a

"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.

In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.

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

A priest asked: What is Fate, Master? And the Master answered: It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence. It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs. It is that which has caused nations to build bywa

What you want, what you're hanging around in the world waiting for, is for something to occur to you.