Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

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.

Not all who own a harp are harpers.

A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.

History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too

The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.

Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

My own life has been spent chronicling the rise and fall of human systems, and I am convinced that we are terribly vulnerable. ... We should be reluctant to turn back upon the frontier of this epoch. Space is indifferent to what we do; it has no fe

An actor's a guy who if you ain't talkin' about him, ain't listening.

Briefly stated, the findings are that when presented with an array of data or a sequence of events in which they are instructed to discover an underlying order, subjects show strong tendencies to perceive order and causality in random arrays, to perc

Five bicycles make a volkswagen, seven make a truck.

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

We are governed not by armies and police but by ideas.

Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.

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

The only problem with seeing too much is that it makes you insane.

Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.

I just asked myself... what would John DeLorean do?

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

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers couldn't compete successfully with poets.

A place for everything and everything in its place.

Nothing succeeds like excess.

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

Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.

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

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

Inglish Spocken Hier: some mangled translations Various signs in Poland: Right turn toward immediate outside. Go soothingly in the snow, as there lurk the ski demons. Five o'clock tea at all hours. In a men's washroom in Sidney:

The most common given name in the world is Mohammad; the most common family name in the world is Chang. Can you imagine the enormous number of people in the world named Mohammad Chang?

The dirty work at political conventions is almost always done in the grim hours between midnight and dawn. Hangmen and politicians work best when the human spirit is at its lowest ebb.

Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called "brightness", but it doesn't seem to work.

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were

He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hopes for the human condition is a fool.

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

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.

Once harm has been done, even a fool understands it.

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

A definition of teaching: casting fake pearls before real swine.

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

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

... indifference is a militant thing ... when it goes away it leaves smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery.

"You little (such a one who, while wearing a copper nose ring, stands in a footbath atop Mount Raruaruaha during a heavy thunderstorm and shouts that Alohura, Goddess of Lightning, has the facial features of a diseased uloruaha root)!"

The Public is merely a multiplied "me."

'Scuse me, while I kiss the sky!

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.

If we can ever make red tape nutritional, we can feed the world.

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

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

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

Practice yourself what you preach.

If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the Constitution. It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's statecraft. Instead, read selected portions of the Washington telephone directory containing listings for all th

When the speaker and he to whom he is speaks do not understand, that is metaphysics.

Confucius say too much.

Where you stand depends on where you sit.

He jests at scars who never felt a wound.

Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.

I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.

When I first arrived in this country I had only fifteen cents in my pocket and a willingness to compromise.

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein.

The two party system ... is a triumph of the dialectic. It showed that two could be one and one could be two and had probably been fabricated by Hegel for the American market on a subcontract from General Dynamics.

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

Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.

The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath.

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

Better late than never.

General notions are generally wrong.

Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money.

Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

There is an old time toast which is golden for its beauty. "When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend."

Don't guess

AWAKE! FEAR! FIRE! FOES! AWAKE! FEAR! FIRE! FOES! AWAKE! AWAKE!

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.

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.

The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of a military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and private wealth was cons

How should they answer?

Americans' greatest fear is that America will turn out to have been a phenomenon, not a civilization.

All is well that ends well.

A morgue is a morgue is a morgue. They can paint the walls with aggressively cheerful primary colors and splashy bold graphics, but it's still a holding place for the dead until they can be parted out to organ banks. Not that I would have cared nor

April 1 This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.

A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to continue the flow of paper.

Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies.

Ben, why didn't you tell me?

A dead man cannot bite.

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know who have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.

Inglish Spocken Hier: some mangled translations Sign on a cathedral in Spain: It is forbidden to enter a woman, even a foreigner if dressed as a man. Above the enterance to a Cairo bar: Unaccompanied ladies not admitted unless with husb

"That's no answer," Job said, "And for someone who's supposed to be omnipotent, let me tell you 'tabernacle' has only one l."

Getting into trouble is easy.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

Free Speech Is The Right To Shout 'Theater' In A Crowded Fire.

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

Yevtushenko has... an ego that can crack crystal at a distance of twenty feet.

[Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality.

If you don't count some of Jehovah's injunctions, there are no humorists in the Bible.

The only happiness lies in reason; all the rest of the world is dismal. The highest reason, however, I see in the work of the artist, and he may experience it as such. Happiness lies in the swiftness of feeling and thinking: all the rest of the worl

We'll try to cooperate fully with the IRS, because, as citizens, we feel a strong patriotic duty not to go to jail.

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

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,

In the first place, God made idiots; this was for practice; then he made school boards.

They will only cause the lower classes to move about needlessly.

Historians have now definitely established that Juan Cabrillo, discoverer of California, was not looking for Kansas, thus setting a precedent that continues to this day.

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.

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

Never have so many understood so little about so much.

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

Tallulah Bankhead barged down the Nile last night as Cleopatra and sank.

What excuses stand in your way? How can you eliminate them?

To restore a sense of reality, I think Walt Disney should have a Hardluckland.