Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging.

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

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.

"To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."

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."

Money doesn't talk, it swears.

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

A good scapegoat is hard to find. A guilty conscience is the mother of invention.

She cried, and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook.

Exceptions prove the rule, and wreck the budget.

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.

I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and I wasn't tempted to buy

Imagine there's no heaven... it's easy if you try.

Fraud is the homage that force pays to reason.

The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.

There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

BS: You remind me of a man. B: What man? BS: The man with the power. B: What power? BS: The power of voodoo. B: Voodoo? BS: You do. B: Do what? BS: Remind me of a man. B: What man? BS: The man with the power...

I used to be a rebel in my youth. This cause... that cause... (chuckle) I backed 'em ALL! But I learned. Rebellion is simply a device used by the immature to hide from his own problems. So I lost interest in politics. Now when I feel aroused by

With women, I've got a long bamboo pole with a leather loop on the end of it. I slip the loop around their necks so they can't get away or come too close. Like catching snakes.

If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each

Men freely believe that what they wish to desire.

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

'Naomi, sex at noon taxes.' I moan. Never odd or even. A man, a plan, a canal, Panama. Madam, I'm Adam. Sit on a potato pan, Otis. Sit on Otis.

There are people who find it odd to eat four or five Chinese meals in a row; in China, I often remind them, there are a billion or so people who find nothing odd about it.

To do two things at once is to do neither.

A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.

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

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne we

"Every morning, I get up and look through the 'Forbes' list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work"

We have no scorched earth policy. We have a policy of scorched Communists.

I reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in New England, but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, fo

You roll my log, and I will roll yours.

Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.

It seems to me that nearly every woman I know wants a man who knows how to love with authority. Women are simple souls who like simple things, and one of the simplest is one of the simplest to give. ... Our family airedale will come clear across t

'Scuse me, while I kiss the sky!

I hate dying.

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."

The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.

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

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.

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

You k'n hide de fier, but w'at you gwine do wid de smoke?

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

When you die, you lose a very important part of your life.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

The thought of being President frightens me and I do not think I want the job.

If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we would all be millionaires.

We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

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.

In any country there must be people who have to die. They are the sacrifices any nation has to make to achieve law and order.

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

"... gentlemen do not read each other's mail."

What soon grows old? Gratitude.

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

If we don't survive, we don't do anything else.

If you sell diamonds, you cannot expect to have many customers. But a diamond is a diamond even if there are no customers.

Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town?

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

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

This was the most unkindest cut of all.

It's from Casablanca. I've been waiting all my life to use that line.

A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.

Alea iacta est. [The die is cast]

It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.

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

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

Take your work seriously but never take yourself seriously; and do not take what happens either to yourself or your work seriously.

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

Flame on!

What we wish, that we readily believe.

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.

Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work.

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.

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

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

I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.

Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance under which you can be booked.

The reason we need the MX missile system is that the missiles we currently have in the ground are the Minuteman model, which is very old. The Defense Department can't even remember where half of them are. Insects have built nests in them. People hav

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

And yet, seasons must be taken with a grain of salt, for they too have a sense of humor, as does history. Corn stalks comedy, comedy stalks tragedy, and this too is historic. And yet, still, when corn meets tragedy face to face, we have politics.

Out of sight is out of mind.

The Crown is full of it!

"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."

"The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as we could with both of them."

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

Prizes are for children.

It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair.

The means-and-ends moralists, or non-doers, always end up on their ends without any means.

[The French Riviera is] a sunny place for shady people.

You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt.

We should keep the Panama Canal. After all, we stole it fair and square.

A woman who is guided by the head and not by the heart is a social pestilence: she has all the defects of the passionate and affectionate woman, with none of her compensations; she is without pity, without love, without virtue, without sex.