The greatest productive force is human selfishness.

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

Imitation is the sincerest form of television.

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.

Lookie, lookie, here comes cookie...

"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination."

Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

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

Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule."

Who goeth a-borrowing goeth a-sorrowing.

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

To have died once is enough.

Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.

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

You cannot see the wood for the trees.

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

A little bit of rape is good for a man's soul.

... "fire" does not matter, "earth" and "air" and "water" do not matter. "I" do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great

Whenever anyone says, "theoretically," they really mean, "not really."

For myself, I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the results of this evening's experiments. Astonished at the wonderful power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on

Fourteen years in the professor dodge has taught me that one can argue ingeniously on behalf of any theory, applied to any piece of literature. This is rarely harmful, because normally no-one reads such essays.

Jesus may love you, but I think you're garbage wrapped in skin.

He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace.

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

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

The first requisite for immortality is death.

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

Remembering is for those who have forgotten.

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

Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.

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."

"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

A snake lurks in the grass.

If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell, I'd sell the plantation and go home.

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.

Fame lost its appeal for me when I went into a public restroom and an autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door.

Where there is much light there is also much shadow.

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they would. The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect that much.

Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills.

In every hierarchy the cream rises until it sours.

God gave man two ears and one tongue so that we listen twice as much as we speak.

Take what you can use and let the rest go by.

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

We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge.

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

I'll never get off this planet.

A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance.

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.

Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable.

I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behin

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.

It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.

In my experience, if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending your left leg, it's modern architecture.

It is not enough that I should succeed. Others must fail.

Eighteen goddess-like daughters are not equal to one son with a hump.

A wise person makes his own decisions, a weak one obeys public opinion.

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

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

In the highest society, as well as in the lowest, woman is merely an instrument of pleasure.

It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either.

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

Paradise is exactly like where you are right now ... only much, much better.

The time spent on any item of the agenda [of a finance committee] will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.

Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is by no means the only 'certain' standard. If you mistake what is relative for something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate truth.

There's no justice in this world.

There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.

After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought, and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon to be created." "This is true," He replied.

"You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks."

Then, gently touching my face, she hesitated for a moment as her incredible eyes poured forth into mine love, joy, pain, tragedy, acceptance, and peace. "'Bye for now," she said warmly.

Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.

All hope abandon, ye who enter here!

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.

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

Yawd [noun, Bostonese]: the campus of Have Id.

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

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

What kind of sordid business are you on now? I mean, man, whither goest thou? Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

The executioner is, I hear, very expert, and my neck is very slender.

Your wig steers the gig.

I'm going to raise an issue and stick it in your ear.

Necessity has no law.

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

Hotels are tired of getting ripped off. I checked into a hotel and they had towels from my house.

The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness.

"Are you police officers?" "No, ma'am. We're musicians."

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

Luck can't last a lifetime, unless you die young.

All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard, ya don't go lookin' for rutabagas.

Whatever it is, I fear Greeks even when they bring gifts.

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

Well, he thought, since neither Aristotelian Logic nor the disciplines of Science seemed to offer much hope, it's time to go beyond them... Drawing a few deep even breaths, he entered a mental state practiced only by Masters of the Universal Way of

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

About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

When the ax entered the forest, the trees said, "The handle is one of us!"

There is a good deal of solemn cant about the common interests of capital and labour. As matters stand, their only common interest is that of cutting each other's throat.

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

Plus ,ca change, plus c'est la m^eme chose. [The more things change, the more they remain the same.]

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

The Bible says that woman was the last thing God made. Evidently He made her on Saturday night. She reveals his fatigue.

If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder.

One big pile is better than two little piles.

Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the men are strong, the women are pretty, and the children are above-average.

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.

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

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

A place for everything and everything in its place.

Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.

A good reputation is more valuable than money.

Look, we trade every day out there with hustlers, deal-makers, shysters, con-men. That's the way businesses get started. That's the way this country was built.

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

TV is chewing gum for the eyes.

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

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.

Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.

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

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.

Why be a man when you can be a success?

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.

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

A society in which women are taught anything but the management of a family, the care of men, and the creation of the future generation is a society which is on its way out.

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

The Anglo-Saxon conscience does not prevent the Anglo-Saxon from sinning, it merely prevents him from enjoying his sin.

"Do you think there's a God?" "Well, ____SOMEbody's out to get me!"

Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet, you can't win.

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

If you lose a son you can always get another, but there's only one Maltese Falcon.

Brahma said: Well, after hearing ten thousand explanations, a fool is no wiser. But an intelligent man needs only two thousand five hundred.

A critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Progress might have been all right once, but it's gone on too long.

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader, but to protect the writer.

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

Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.

Look before you leap.

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

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.

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.

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

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

There is no cure for birth and death other than to enjoy the interval.

Faith is under the left nipple.

"Spare no expense to save money on this one."

Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt. [Confound those who have said our remarks before us.] or [May they perish who have expressed our bright ideas before us.]

Practice is the best of all instructors.

American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference between the men's room and the women's room with

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

Home is where the hurt is.

Here's to women. Would that we could fall into her arms without falling into her hands.

If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.

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.

Producers seem to be so prejudiced against actors who've had no training. And there's no reason for it. So what if I didn't attend the Royal Academy for twelve years? I'm still a professional trying to be the best actress I can. Why doesn't anyone

"I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!"

The price of success in philosophy is triviality.

Would it help if I got out and pushed?

Boston State House is the hub of the Solar System. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar.

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

Mate, this parrot wouldn't VOOM if you put four million volts through it!

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

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

Don't get mad, get even.

God instructs the heart, not by ideas, but by pains and contradictions.

I hate dying.

Burnt Sienna. That's the best thing that ever happened to Crayolas.

Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and hounds and traps, his race survives

The trouble is, there is an endless supply of White Men, but there has always been a limited number of Human Beings.

Chapter 1 The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Well, we'll really have a party, but we've gotta post a guard outside.

If God is One, what is bad?

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

I always wake up at the crack of ice.

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. T

A prediction is worth twenty explanations.

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

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.

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.

Whatever is not nailed down is mine. Whatever I can pry up is not nailed down.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

Think lucky. If you fall in a pond, check your pockets for fish.

A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.

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.

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.

Love the sea? I dote upon it

Or 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.

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

There is always something new out of Africa.

You don't move to Edina, you achieve Edina.

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

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

I need another lawyer like I need another hole in my head.

The streets were dark with something more than night.

Neckties strangle clear thinking.

Fortune and love befriend the bold.

A witty saying proves nothing.

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

Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.

Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait. [If youth but knew, if old age but could.]

Many of the characters are fools and they are always playing tricks on me and treating me badly.

An ounce of mother is worth a ton of priest.

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

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

Dustin Farnum: Why, yesterday, I had the audience glued to their seats! Oliver Herford: Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of it!

When I have one foot in the grave I will tell the truth about women. I shall tell it, jump into my coffin, pull the lid over me, and say, "Do what you like now."

Do not seek death; death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.

... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If somebody gets handed a name like "H.

Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.

A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample.

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

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

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

Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines.

A man is known by the company he organizes.

Flame on!

Force has no place where there is need of skill.

We all live in a state of ambitious poverty.

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

Facts are the enemy of truth.

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

Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?

... but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witch

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.

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

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

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

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

If ever the pleasure of one has to be bought by the pain of the other, there better be no trade. A trade by which one gains and the other loses is a fraud.

What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.

Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.

Man is the measure of all things.

... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If somebody gets handed a name like "H.