Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

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

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

Patch griefs with proverbs.

In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one of the risks he takes.

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

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation."

If you wish to be happy for one hour, get drunk. If you wish to be happy for three days, get married. If you wish to be happy for a month, kill your pig and eat it. If you wish to be happy forever, learn to fish.

Well begun is half done.

"Well," Brahma said, "even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is no wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five hundred."

Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.

The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky.

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.

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,

The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt.

"...The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!" "Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to feel interested. "No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed. "That's what the name is called. The nam

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author

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

"Give me enough medals, and I'll win any war."

Someday we'll look back on this moment and plow into a parked car.

The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the rationalizations of the victors. History is written by the survivors.

I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.

The average Ph.D thesis is nothing but the transference of bones from one graveyard to another.

That government is best which governs least.

Men's skin is different from women's skin. It is usually bigger, and it has more snakes tattooed on it. Also, if you examine a woman's skin very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently tracing the slender curve of her cal

... a thing called Ethics, whose nature was confusing but if you had it you were a High-Class Realtor and if you hadn't you were a shyster, a piker and a fly-by-night. These virtues awakened Confidence and enabled you to handle Bigger Propositions.

"After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the cost to others, to win advancement."

Someday, Weederman, we'll look back on all this and laugh... It will probably be one of those deep, eerie ones that slowly builds to a blood-curdling maniacal scream... but still it will be a laugh.

"It says he made us all to be just like him. So if we're dumb, then god is dumb, and maybe even a little ugly on the side."

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped.

I DON'T THINK I'M ALONE when I say I'd like to see more and more planets fall under the ruthless domination of our solar system.

I went to my mother and told her I intended to commence a different life. I asked for and obtained her blessing and at once commenced the career of a robber.

In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable.

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

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

A place for everything and everything in its place.

"Not only is God dead, but just try to find a plumber on weekends."

"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

... 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.

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

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.

I knew her before she was a virgin.

You can't underestimate the power of fear.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

The future not being born, my friend, we will abstain from baptizing it.

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

A new taste had been acquired and a new appetite began to grow. The time had long since arrived to crush the technical intelligentsia, which had come to regard itself as too irreplaceable and had not gotten used to catching instructions on the wing.

"Queensboro president Donald Mannis, charged with receiving bribes in exchange for city contracts, resigned on Tuesday. Mannis feels he must devote more time to impending litigation, some of which might emanate from a recent statement he made compar

All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.

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

There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2, to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his

The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.

The language of politics is poetry, not prose. Jackson is poetry. Cuomo is poetry. Dukakis is a word processor.

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it.

Facts are the enemy of truth.

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.

Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.

Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.

Every country has the government it deserves.

I'm going to Vietnam at the request of the White House. President Johnson says a war isn't really a war without my jokes.

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

I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing...

Leave no stone unturned.

One hundred women are not worth a single testicle.

Carol's head ached as she trailed behind the unsmiling Calibrees along the block of booths. She chirruped at Kennicott, "Let's be wild! Let's ride on the merry-go-round and grab a gold ring!" Kennicott considered it, and mumbled to Calibree, "Thin

You never gain something but that you lose something.

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

Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the railroad yards."

The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo! now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished.

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.

C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre! [It is magnificent, but it is not war]

Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.

"Avoid revolution or expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve, but we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you."

You shouldn't wallow in self-pity. But it's OK to put your feet in it and swish them around a little.

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?

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

Don't guess

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read.

A game can by God repent or we'll punish it. That's how they did it in Salem in the seventeenth century, and that's how we'll do it now.

As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.