Credit ... is the only enduring testimonial to man's confidence in man.

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say. And then say it with the utmost levity.

I value kindness to human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and old men

Everyone is in the best seat.

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.

Honesty's the best policy.

The Priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go. A voice, sweetened and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning the curve he waved his hand. A sleek brown head, a seal's,

It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old all down the unchanging days and die one day like any other day, only short

No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have, and I think he's a dirty little beast.

Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers. There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate. If you are civil to the voluble, they will abuse your patience; if brusque, your character.

I am looking for a honest man.

It's all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back.

Mental power tended to corrupt, and absolute intelligence tended to corrupt absolutely, until the victim eschewed violence entirely in favor of smart solutions to stupid problems.

I'm not the person your mother warned you about... her imagination isn't that good.

A woman takes off her claim to respect along with her garments.

Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.

I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.

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

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.

The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late and owns the worm farm.

If Jesus Christ came to this town, people would say, great guy; terrible carpenter.

The way of the world is to praise dead saints and prosecute live ones.

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

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

Piece of cake!

The Almighty in His infinite wisdom did not see fit to create Frenchmen in the image of Englishmen.

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. My advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.

Believe everything you hear about the world; nothing is too impossibly bad.

Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.

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.

For a light heart lives long.

If you would know the value of money, go try to borrow some.

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

"What was the worst thing you've ever done?" "I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me... the most dreadful thing."

Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.

Sometimes, at the end of the day, when I'm smiling and shaking their hands, I want to kick them.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

There's no justice in this world.

Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance under which you can be booked.

Some men are heterosexual, and some are bisexual, and some men don't think about sex at all... they become lawyers.

Everyone wants results, but no one is willing to do what it takes to get them.

Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.

What is involved in such [close] relationships is a form of emotional chemistry, so far unexplained by any school of psychiatry I am aware of, that conditions nothing so simple as a choice between the poles of attraction and repulsion. You can meet

If what they've been doing hasn't solved the problem, tell them to do something else.

My rackets are run on strictly American lines, and they're going to stay that way.

While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe, for you can watch both of his.

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.

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

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

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

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

Mum's the word.

There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes and those who do not.

All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable.

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

A snake lurks in the grass.

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for not by our labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in his infinite wisdom has given control of property interests of the country, and upon the successful manag

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away."

There is perhaps in every thing of any consequence, secret history, which it would be amusing to know, could we have it authentically communicated.

Most people deserve each other.

My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.

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

Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.

XLI: The more one produces, the less one gets. XLII: Simple systems are not feasible because they require infinite testing. XLIII: Hardware works best when it matters the least. XLIV: Aircraft flight in the 21st century will always be in a we

The horizon of many people is a circle with a radius of zero. They call this their point of view.

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the thing," it's the money.

It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case.

Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 0. integrated 0. management 0. options 1. total 1. organizational 1. flexibility 2. systematized 2. monitored 2. capability 3. parallel 3. reciprocal 3. mobility 4. functional 4. digital 4. programming 5. re

Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business. For the experience of age, in things that fall within the compass of it, directeth them; but in new things, a

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

One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say "Canada". Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something.

Many receive advice, few profit by it.

A non-vegetarian anti-abortionist is a contradiction in terms.

However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional manner ... sulking and nausea.

The life which is unexamined is not worth living.

I am America's child, a spastic slogging on demented limbs drooling I'll trade my PhD for a telephone voice.

San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.

If you lived today as if it were your last, you'd buy up a box of rockets and fire them all off, wouldn't you?

"We're not talking about the same thing," he said. "For you the world is weird because if you're not bored with it you're at odds with it. For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to

"The Army is a place where you get up early in the morning to be yelled at by people with short haircuts and tiny brains."

We're fantastically incredibly sorry for all these extremely unreasonable things we did. I can only plead that my simple, barely-sentient friend and myself are underprivileged, deprived and also college students.

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.

Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercio

Sorry 'bout that sweat, honey. That's just holy water.

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

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

Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town?

You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were you. I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare yours, but we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the company.

In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.

"I don't know whether God exists or not, but it makes no difference to me." "It's not like He's passing out free money or anything."

In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty.

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.

An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.

Nobody shot me.

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.

Watch your mouth, kid, or you'll find yourself floating home.

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

The Israelis are the Doberman pinschers of the Middle East. They treat the Arabs like postmen.

We tried to close Ohio's borders and ran into a Constitutional problem. There's a provision in the Constitution that says you can't close your borders to interstate commerce, and garbage is a form of interstate commerce.

All we know is the phenomenon: we spend our time sending messages to each other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information. This seems to be our most urgent biological function; it is what we do with our lives."

I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of the sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for you are loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway.

I have had my television aerials removed. It's the moral equivalent of a prostate operation.

Many hands make light work.

All of us should treasure his Oriental wisdom and his preaching of a Zen-like detachment, as exemplified by his constant reminder to clerks, tellers, or others who grew excited by his presence in their banks: "Just lie down on the floor and keep calm

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

"Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *___can* you believe?!"

Please try to limit the amount of "this room doesn't have any bazingas" until you are told that those rooms are "punched out." Once punched out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas, and such.

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

I have nothing but utter contempt for the courts of this land.

When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.

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

According to the Rand McNally Places-Rated Almanac, the best place to live in America is the city of Pittsburgh. The city of New York came in twenty-fifth. Here in New York we really don't care too much. Because we know that we could beat up their

Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of whatever depths they were once able to plumb.

Under every stone lurks a politician.

Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund.

Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a big store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at reasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let's build a home center. And before long ho

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death. Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behaviour.

I use not only all the brains I have, but all those I can borrow as well.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring Chile. Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping pictures. One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret military installation. In an instant, armed troops surroun

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.

The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly important thing to people.

"Anyone can say 'no'. It is the first word a child learns and often the first word he speaks. It is a cheap word because it requires no explanation, and many men and women have acquired a reputation for intelligence who know only this word and have u

You k'n hide de fier, but w'at you gwine do wid de smoke?

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."

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

To be or not to be.

After the ground war began, captured Iraqi soldiers said any of them caught by superiors wearing a white T-shirt would be executed because of the ease with which the shirts could be used as surrender flags. Some Iraqi soldiers carried bleach with th

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

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

Would ye both eat your cake and have your cake?

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,

Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years.

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

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

[Nuclear war] ... may not be desirable.

Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

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

One picture is worth more than ten thousand words.

Likewise, the national appetizer, brine-cured herring with raw onions, wins few friends, Germans excepted.

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

Were there no women, men might live like gods.

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

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

There are more dead people than living, and their numbers are increasing.

Since we're all here, we must not be all there.

The trouble with opportunity is that it always comes disguised as hard work.

Correction does much, but encouragement does more.

"You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive."

A journey of a thousand miles starts under one's feet.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.

"The jig's up, Elman." "Which jig?"

I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

When eating an elephant take one bite at a time.

When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.

Gratitude, like love, is never a dependable international emotion.

Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.

A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.

When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.

When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.

To generalize is to be an idiot.

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.

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

It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of people.

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class management.

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

"That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver"

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

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

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

Persistence in one opinion has never been considered a merit in political leaders.

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

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.

I am just a nice, clean-cut Mongolian boy.

Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.

In Pierre Trudeau, Canada has finally produced a Prime Minister worthy of assassination.

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

"Life would be much simpler and things would get done much faster if it weren't for other people"

Not to laugh, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand.

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

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

One good turn deserves another.

If you have seen one city slum you have seen them all.

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

We have no scorched earth policy. We have a policy of scorched Communists.

May you live in uninteresting times.

"What's this? Trix? Aunt! Trix? You? You're after the prize! What is it?" He picked up the box and studied the back. "A glow-in-the-dark squid! Have you got it out of there yet?" He tilted the box, angling the little colored balls of cereal

Men are superior to women.

One of the large consolations for experiencing anything unpleasant is the knowledge that one can communicate it.

The first requisite for immortality is death.

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.

I would not like to be a political leader in Russia. They never know when they're being taped.

We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.

Thank God I've always avoided persecuting my enemies.

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

I'm not sure I've even got the brains to be President.

Save a little money each month and at the end of the year you'll be surprised at how little you have.

If a thing's worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

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

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.

In the future, there will be fewer but better Russians.

One is often kept in the right road by a rut.

It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.

"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."

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

Getting kicked out of the American Bar Association is liked getting kicked out of the Book-of-the-Month Club.

The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words since I first called my brother's father dad.

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

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

There is no doubt that my lawyer is honest. For example, when he filed his income tax return last year, he declared half of his salary as 'unearned income.'

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

Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is what you get when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.

"... all the modern inconveniences ..."

A man who cannot seduce men cannot save them either.

No good deed goes unpunished.

I have ways of making money that you know nothing of.

Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organising and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.

You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.

October 12, the Discovery. It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

There's nothing worse for your business than extra Santa Clauses smoking in the men's room.

Fear and loathing, my man, fear and loathing.

Don't get the idea that I'm one of those goddamn radicals. Don't get the idea that I'm knocking the American system.

The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.

We ... make the modern error of dignifying the Individual. We do everything we can to butter him up. We give him a name, assure him that he has certain inalienable rights, educate him, let him pass on his name to his brats and when he dies we give

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has not yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.

Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.

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

A full belly makes a dull brain.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we".

Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.

Rome was not built in one day.

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.

For the first time we have a weapon that nobody has used for thirty years. This gives me great hope for the human race.

People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out on the pleasure.

For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.

Too often I find that the volume of paper expands to fill the available briefcases.

I consider the day misspent that I am not either charged with a crime, or arrested for one.

O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.

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

How comes it to pass, then, that we appear such cowards in reasoning, and are so afraid to stand the test of ridicule?

A committee is a group that keeps the minutes and loses hours.

Walk softly and carry a big stick.

Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood.

Beauty is one of the rare things which does not lead to doubt of God.

I am convinced that the truest act of courage is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice. To be a man is to suffer for others.

Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers and cheating on your income tax.

If a shameless woman expects to be defiled and then dies of her fierce love because you do not consent, will chastity also be homicide?

So so is good, very good, very excellent good: and yet it is not; it is but so so.

You tread upon my patience.

When the blind lead the blind they will both fall over the cliff.

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

It is sweet to let the mind unbend on occasion.

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

Nasrudin returned to his village from the imperial capital, and the villagers gathered around to hear what had passed. "At this time," said Nasrudin, "I only want to say that the King spoke to me." All the villagers but the stupidest ran off to spr

The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.

To know Edina is to reject it.

How can you govern a nation which has 246 kinds of cheese?

One man's Mede is another man's Persian.

Without adventure, civilization is in full decay.

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.

Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.

I never killed a man that didn't deserve it.

It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

Law enforcement officers should use only the minimum force necessary in dealing with disorders when they arise.

Harp not on that string.

You cannot see the wood for the trees.

The truth is what is; what should be is a dirty lie.

Anger is momentary madness.

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

The big cities of America are becoming Third World countries.

If there is no wind, row.

For certain people, after fifty, litigation takes the place of sex.

Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angeles to San Francisco live there?

The Least Successful Executions History has furnished us with two executioners worthy of attention. The first performed in Sydney in Australia. In 1803 three attempts were made to hang a Mr. Joseph Samuels. On the first two of these the rope snap

What one fool can do, another can.

The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.

Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember, it didn't help the rabbit.

To say you got a vote of confidence would be to say you needed a vote of confidence.

Oh this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is.

Small things make base men proud.

Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.

Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money.

It's from Casablanca. I've been waiting all my life to use that line.

The plot was designed in a light vein that somehow became varicose.

An ounce of mother is worth a ton of priest.

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

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

The optimum committee has no members.

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.

You give me space to belong to myself yet without separating me from your own life. May it all turn out to your happiness.

"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

A man's house is his castle.

Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont.