In "King Henry VI, Part II," Shakespeare has Dick Butcher suggest to his fellow anti-establishment rabble-rousers, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." That action may be extreme but a similar sentiment was expressed by Thomas K. Co

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

You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form. The short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified", which means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears tax-preparation expert to distinguish betwe

While there's life, there's hope.

Go to the Scriptures... the joyful promises it contains will be a balsam to all your troubles.

To every Ph.D. there is an equal and opposite Ph.D.

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

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

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

There are no manifestos like cannon and musketry.

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

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

Use an accordion. Go to jail.

He who fears the unknown may one day flee from his own backside.

October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.

Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.

Steady movement is more important than speed, much of the time. So long as there is a regular progression of stimuli to get your mental hooks into, there is room for lateral movement. Once this begins, its rate is a matter of discretion.

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

All this wheeling and dealing around, why, it isn't for money, it's for fun. Money's just the way we keep score.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

Divorce is a game played by lawyers.

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.

Don't guess

The human instinct to censor thrives, as it always will, living in irrepressible conflict with the human instinct to speak. Outrage, self-righteousness, and paranoia feed the maw of censorship. Squelching speech, however, never reduces society's net

A myth is a religion in which no-one any longer believes.

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

The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.

Maryel brought her bat into Exit once and started whacking people on the dance floor. Now everyone's doing it. It's called grand slam dancing.

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

The fact that it works is immaterial.

If it were thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes. A more sententious, holding- forth old bore who expected every

Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.

"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."

Education and religion are two things not regulated by supply and demand. The less of either the people have, the less they want.

All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can, too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you can deduct the cost of your house, beca

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

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

The problem that we thought was a problem was, indeed, a problem, but not the problem we thought was the problem.

Turn the other cheek.

The longest part of the journey is said to be the passing of the gate.

Imitation is the sincerest form of television.

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

As long as there are entrenched social and political distinctions between sexes, races or classes, there will be forms of science whose main function is to rationalize and legitimize these distinctions.

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

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

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

It is wise to keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final.

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

Sho' they got to have it against the law. Shoot, ever'body git high, they wouldn't be nobody git up and feed the chickens. Hee-hee.

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

Some performers on television appear to be horrible people, but when you finally get to know them in person, they turn out to be even worse.

Men will fuck mud.

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

Let me assure you that to us here at First National, you're not just a number. Youre two numbers, a dash, three more numbers, another dash and another number.

Ben, why didn't you tell me?

Why does a hearse horse snicker, hauling a lawyer away?

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.'

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

Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.

In Hollywood, all marriages are happy. It's trying to live together afterwards that causes the problems.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

"What the hell are you getting so upset about? I thought you didn't believe in God." "I don't," she sobbed, bursting violently into tears, "but the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid Go

"All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right hands."

Imagine what we can imagine!

Crucifixes are sexy because there's a naked man on them.

Human resources are human first, and resources second.

What we do not understand we do not possess.

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

He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

This was the most unkindest cut of all.

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.

One of your most ancient writers, a historian named Herodotus, tells of a thief who was to be executed. As he was taken away he made a bargain with the king: in one year he would teach the king's favorite horse to sing hymns. The other prisoners wa

A kind of Batman of contemporary letters.

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

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

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

We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength. But there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a French restaurant. [...] I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk w

British education is probably the best in the world, if you can survive it. If you can't there is nothing left for you but the diplomatic corps.

Pauca sed matura. [Few but excellent.]

The smallest worm will turn being trodden on.

If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The "professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on t

I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.

There are many of us in this old world of ours who hold that things break about even for all of us. I have observed, for example, that we all get about the same amount of ice. The rich get it in the summer and the poor get it in the winter.

Well, the handwriting is on the floor.

The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven; The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change. These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.

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

Divorce is a game played by lawyers.

There is a secret person undamaged within every individual.

America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.

The life which is unexamined is not worth living.

Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his followers. One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She

All men know the utility of useful things; but they do not know the utility of futility.

That's no moon...

We have lingered long enough on the shores of the Cosmic Ocean.

I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a painting by Goya.

For courage mounteth with occasion.

As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like trying to grasp the meaning of existence. Both make one feel like a baby clutching at a basketball: one's palms keep sliding off.

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

Goals... Plans... they're fantasies, they're part of a dream world...

Getting into trouble is easy.

If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green women you've got in the house.

Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.

In childhood a woman must be subject to her father; in youth to her husband; when her husband is dead, to her sons. A woman must never be free of subjugation.

The `loner' may be respected, but he is always resented by his colleagues, for he seems to be passing a critical judgment on them, when he may be simply making a limiting statement about himself.

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.

Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.

Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.

No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day.

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.