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

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

You must know that a man can have only one invulnerable loyalty, loyalty to his own concept of the obligations of manhood. All other loyalties are merely deputies of that one.

If any demonstrator ever lays down in front of my car, it'll be the last car he ever lays down in front of.

There is a natural hootchy-kootchy to a goldfish.

No man is useless who has a friend, and if we are loved we are indispensable.

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

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.

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

United Nations, New York, December 25. The peace and joy of the Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of all the patriots of every persuasion. Meanwhil

WHENEVER ANYBODY SAYS he's struggling to become a human being I have to laugh because the apes beat him to it by about a million years. Struggle to become a parrot or something.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

Exxon's 'Universe of Energy' tends to the peculiar rather than the humorous ... After [an incomprehensible film montage about wind and sun and rain and strip mines and] two or three minutes of mechanical confusion, the seats locomote through a short

I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.

If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.

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

You buy a judge by weight, like iron in a junk yard. A justice of the peace or a magistrate can be had for a five-dollar bill. In the municipal courts, he will cost you ten. In the circuit or superior courts, he wants fifteen. The state appellate

So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.

"I wonder", he said to himself, "what's in a book while it's closed. Oh, I know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people I don't know yet

Most people in this society who aren't actively mad are, at best, reformed or potential lunatics.

All other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of the United States.

Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.

Ten persons who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.

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.

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

The road to ruin is always in good repair, and the travellers pay the expense of it.

Interesting poll results reported in today's New York Post: people on the street in midtown Manhattan were asked whether they approved of the US invasion of Grenada. Fifty-three percent said yes; 39 percent said no; and 8 percent said "Gimme a quart

Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs repainting.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

As well look for a needle in a bottle of hay.

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

Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian. [...] To him is ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia

He missed an invaluable opportunity to hold his tongue.

One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as one man would have produced alone. These two plus two more will produce half again as many ideas. These four plus four more begin to represent a creative meeting, and the ratio c

Money can't buy love, but it improves your bargaining position.

"For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off."

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

Even God lends a hand to honest boldness.

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

"One Saturday afternoon, during the campaign to decide whether or not there should be a Coastal Commission, I took a helicopter ride from Los Angeles to San Diego. We passed several state beaches, some crowded and some virtually empty. They had the

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

When democracy granted democratic methods to us in times of opposition, this was bound to happen in a democratic system. However, we National Socialists never asserted that we represented a democratic point of view, but we have declared openly that

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

In spite of everything, I still believe that people are good at heart.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

New Jersey is not the armpit of the nation; it's the asshole of the universe.

So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of money?

Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Water, taken in moderation cannot hurt anybody.

I owe the public nothing.

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."

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

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

The price of success in philosophy is triviality.

The most delightful day after the one on which you buy a cottage in the country is the one on which you resell it.

Trust in Allah, but tie your camel.

If I cannot bend Heaven, I shall move Hell.

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.

Let's remind ourselves that last year's fresh idea is today's cliche.

I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude. I'm a very technical

People love high ideals, but they got to be about 33-percent plausible.

per year.

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back the when it begins to rain.

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

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

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

In success there's a tendency to keep on doing what you were doing.

Every man is apt to form his notions of things difficult to be apprehended, or less familiar, from their analogy to things which are more familiar. Thus, if a man bred to the seafaring life, and accustomed to think and talk only of matters relating t

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

Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.

The very remembrance of my former misfortune proves a new one to me.

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out.

Solipsists of the World... you are already united.

It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.

A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."

It is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is a proper judge of it.

Man has made his bedlam; let him lie in it.

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.

The shortest distance between two points is under construction.

The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it.

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

I have a very strange feeling about this...

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.

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

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.

Never promise more than you can perform.

Like ya know? Rock 'N Roll is an esoteric language that unlocks the creativity chambers in people's brains, and like totally activates their essential hipness, which of course is like totally necessary for saving the earth, like because the first th

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

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

When you are about to die, a wombat is better than no company at all.

It is imperative when flying coach that you restrain any tendency toward the vividly imaginative. For although it may momentarily appear to be the case, it is not at all likely that the cabin is entirely inhabited by crying babies smoking inexpensiv

Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform. Those who are totally in earnest are willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie and intrigue for the benefit of his country.

Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.

If a man has a strong faith he can indulge in the luxury of skepticism.

You're never too old to become younger.

Why be a man when you can be a success?

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

I used to be a rebel in my youth. This cause... that cause... (chuckle) I backed 'em ALL! But I learned. Rebellion is simply a device used by the immature to hide from his own problems. So I lost interest in politics. Now when I feel aroused by

Never explain. Your friends do not need it and your enemies will never believe you anyway.

The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones from man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the milestones are lifted.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

The primary theme of SoupCon is communication. The acronym "LEO" represents the secondary theme: Law Enforcement Officials The overall theme of SoupCon shall be: Avoiding Communication with Law Enforcement Officials

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

... the privileged being which we call human is distinguished from other animals only by certain double-edged manifestations which in charity we can only call "inhuman."

... A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.

I will follow the good side right to the fire, but not into it if I can help it.

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long ... se

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.

The only thing that stops God from sending a second Flood is that the first one was useless.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.

You can't play your friends like marks, kid.

"You can't survive by sucking the juice from a wet mitten."

Life is a serious burden, which no thinking, humane person would wantonly inflict on someone else.

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

The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of management is that success equals skill.

Having no talent is no longer enough.

Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again.

"Hi, I'm Preston A. Mantis, president of Consumers Retail Law Outlet. As you can see by my suit and the fact that I have all these books of equal height on the shelves behind me, I am a trained legal attorney. Do you have a car or a job? Do you ever

Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of dollars: For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your tax return around under your armpit. No IRS ag

By the middle 1880's, practically all the roads except those in the South, were of the present standard gauge. The southern roads were still five feet between rails. It was decided to change the gauge of all southern roads to standard, in one day

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never any good to oneself.

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

Would ye both eat your cake and have your cake?

To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war.

"Every morning, I get up and look through the 'Forbes' list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work"

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.

The only alliance I would make with the Women's Liberation Movement is in bed.

With her body, woman is more sincere than man; but with her mind she lies. And when she lies, she does not believe herself.

Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?

I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.

Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.

Humans are communications junkies. We just can't get enough.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

"Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun."

Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade, since it consists principally of dealings with men.

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.

For there are moments when one can neither think nor feel. And if one can neither think nor feel, she thought, where is one?

May you live in uninteresting times.

It is indeed desirable to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.

I had never been too political, but I knew how white people treated black people and it was hard for me to come back to the bullshit white people put a black person through in this country. To realize you don't have any power to make things differen

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

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

A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.

There is a limit to the admiration we may hold for a man who spends his waking hours poking the contents of chickens with a stick.

Justice is incidental to law and order.

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

We are giving instruction to FBI agents in the various Chinese dialects ... to handle present and likely future contingencies.

My daddy's brains was so scrambled he thought he was Jesus. They put him in a nut house for 5 years and when he got out, he didn't think he was Jesus, he thought he was *God*! ... Which made me Jesus.

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

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me that I may s

The adjuration to be "normal" seems shockingly repellent to me; I see neither hope nor comfort in sinking to that low level. I think it is ignorance that makes people think of abnormality only with horror and allows them to remain undismayed at the

I have always noticed that whenever a radical takes to Imperialism, he catches it in a very acute form.

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

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

In the long run we are all dead.

The chief cause of problems is solutions.

I'm never through with a girl until I've had her three ways.

When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

It's better to be wanted for murder that not to be wanted at all.

When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.

BS: You remind me of a man. B: What man? BS: The man with the power. B: What power? BS: The power of voodoo. B: Voodoo? BS: You do. B: Do what? BS: Remind me of a man. B: What man? BS: The man with the power...

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Tom Hayden is the kind of politician who gives opportunism a bad name.

Too clever is dumb.

Rembrandt is not to be compared in the painting of character with our extraordinarily gifted English artist, Mr. Rippingille.

The last vestiges of the old Republic have been swept away.

We are so fond of each other because our ailments are the same.

Oh wearisome condition of humanity! Born under one law, to another bound.

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

"You boys lookin' for trouble?" "Sure. Whaddya got?"

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

According to my best recollection, I don't remember.

Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.

Genius is pain.

She hates testicles, thus limiting the men she can admire to Democratic candidates for president.

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

"... I should explain that I was wearing a black velvet cape that was supposed to make me look like the dashing, romantic Zorro but which actually made me look like a gigantic bat wearing glasses ..."

The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.

The best you get is an even break.

Well, don't worry about it... It's nothing.

Like, if I'm not for me, then fer shure, like who will be? And if, y'know, if I'm not like fer anyone else, then hey, I mean, what am I? And if not now, like I dunno, maybe like when? And if not Who, then I dunno, maybe like the Rolling Stones?

It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.

Tart words make no friends; a spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar.

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

Facts are the enemy of truth.

Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.

You have all eternity to be cautious in when you're dead.

Old age is always fifteen years old than I am.

It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong. Our offense consists in doubting it.

Dorothy: But how can you talk without a brain? Scarecrow: Well, I don't know... but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking.

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

If you live in New York, even if you're Catholic, you're Jewish.

Must I hold a candle to my shames?

"Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence"

If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers.

You can observe a lot just by watching.

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.

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

The reasons that each of these countries has had to renege on its financial committments were all somewhat different: Argentina because of a war, Poland because of its vast misguided overinvestment in heavy industry, Honduras because the coffee price

My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.

Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a rock.

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.

I sometimes think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

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

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

Audacity, and again, audacity, and always audacity.

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

More people are flattered into virtue than bullied out of vice.

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

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.

I never made a mistake in my life. I thought I did once, but I was wrong.

The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.

It seems appropriate to me that Mapplethorpe's perverse images should be situated so close to Congress, which perpetuates a number of unnatural acts upon the body politic every day, without benefit of artificial lubrication or foreplay.

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.

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

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.

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

Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing - and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even.

America is a melting pot. You know, where those on the bottom get burned, and the scum rises to the top.

"I may appear to be just sitting here like a bucket of tapioca, but don't let appearances fool you. I'm approaching old age ... at the speed of light."

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

It will be generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant examples.

I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.

No one becomes depraved in a moment.

I can't seem to bring myself to say, "Well, I guess I'll be toddling along." It isn't that I can't toddle. It's that I can't guess I'll toddle.

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