Just once I would like to persuade the audience not to wear any article of blue denim. If only they could see themselves in a pair of brown corduroys like mine instead of this awful, boring blue denim. I don't enjoy the sky or sea as much as I used

He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.

This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly, because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under which it recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has "deregulated" the airline industry. What t

During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment of Christianity has been upon trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity,; in both, superstition, bigo

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented hell.

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

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.

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

A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.

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

"It was a Roman who said it was sweet to die for one's country. The Greeks never said it was sweet to die for anything. They had no vital lies."

When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.

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.

If you aren't rich you should always look useful.

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

I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness; And from that full meridian of my glory I haste now to my setting. I shall fall, Like a bright exhalation in the evening And no man see me more.

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

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.

I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.

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.

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths good theatre.

Veni, vidi, vici. [I came, I saw, I conquered].

You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.

Diary of a Young Girl LITE(tm)

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

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

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post how it feels about dogs.

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

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

A man is known by the company he organizes.

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

I owe the government $3400 in taxes. So I sent them two hammers and a toilet seat.

It is like saying that for the cause of peace, God and the Devil will have a high-level meeting.

People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.

TO THOSE OF YOU WHO DESIRE IT, I GRANT YOU MADRAK'S BLESSING: Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires for

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ances

"You and I as individuals can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but only for a limited period of time. Why should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?"

He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.

Necessity has no law.

CF&C stole it, fair and square.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

It's hard to drive at the limit, but it's harder to know where the limits are.

I do desire we may be better strangers.

The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward.

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.

For the first time we have a weapon that nobody has used for thirty years. This gives me great hope for the human race.

My advice to the women's clubs of America is to raise more hell and fewer dahlias.

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

So little time, so little to do.

Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree."

The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.

General notions are generally wrong.

Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.

One man's Mede is another man's Persian.

Patience is the best remedy for every trouble.

I try not to break the rules but merely to test their elasticity.

Death is a spirit leaving a body, sort of like a shell leaving the nut behind.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church.

When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder.

The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture, finished, and put inside boxes.

We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.

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 avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

I will make you shorter by the head.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.

The government [is] extremely fond of amassing great quantities of statistics. These are raised to the nth degree, the cube roots are extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive displays. What must be kept ever in mind, how

Whom the mad would destroy, first they make Gods.

I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the kind of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled substances being in widespread use. Back then, there were no restrictions, in terms of talent, on who could make

Beggars should be no choosers.

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

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

Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals. To actual women it is merely a good excuse not to play football.

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

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

Life is the living you do, Death is the living you don't do.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

Three minutes' thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.

"Nuclear war would really set back cable."

Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not advice, it is merely custom.

A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.

You mentioned your name as if I should recognize it, but beyond the obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a freemason, and an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.

Kiss me, Kate, we will be married o' Sunday.

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.

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

Once I belonged to a group that really had THE WORD. I fought like hell for them. But another group came along and exposed the word of my group as shallow and degenerate. They had a better word. So I quit the first group and lost all the friends

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

Well, he didn't know what to do, so he decided to look at the government, to see what they did, and scale it down and run his life that way.

...He who laughs does not believe in what he laughs at, but neither does he hate it. Therefore, laughing at evil means not preparing oneself to combat it, and laughing at good means denying the power through which good is self-propagating.

He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much a master of the world as he who is ready to die.

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

If you took all of the grains of sand in the world, and lined them up end to end in a row, you'd be working for the government!

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.

The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired warranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by changing the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped marker.

"God gives burdens; also shoulders" Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech at the end of the 1980 election. At least he said it was a Jewish saying; I can't find it anywhere. I'm sure he's telling the truth though; why wo

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.

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

A is for Apple.

"I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating."

The man with the best job in the country is the Vice President. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, "How's the President?"

The man who has never been flogged has never been taught.

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

My dear People. My dear Bagginses and Boffins, and my dear Tooks and Brandybucks, and Grubbs, and Chubbs, and Burrowses, and Hornblowers, and Bolgers, Bracegirdles, Goodbodies, Brockhouses and Proudfoots. Also my good Sackville Bagginses that I w

All is well that ends well.

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

You can fool all the people all of the time if the advertising is right and the budget is big enough.

America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?

What's a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority.

When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

The way I understand it, the Russians are sort of a combination of evil and incompetence... sort of like the Post Office with tanks.

Texas is Hell on woman and horses.

A place for everything and everything in its place.

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

I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.

Adde parvum parvo manus acervus erit. [Add little to little and there will be a big pile.]

One good turn deserves another.

If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows.

From the cradle to the coffin underwear comes first.

She ran the gamut of emotions from 'A' to 'B'.

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

What we wish, that we readily believe.

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

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

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.

Some men are heterosexual, and some are bisexual, and some men don't think about sex at all... they become lawyers.

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

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome.

I didn't believe in reincarnation in any of my other lives. I don't see why I should have to believe in it in this one.