Things are more like they are today than they ever were before.

The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages.

Diary of a Young Girl LITE(tm)

Prizes are for children.

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

"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point."

The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly important thing to people.

"Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none."

Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines.

The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.

Well, you know, no matter where you go, there you are.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

I value kindness to human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and old men

The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything.

The only alliance I would make with the Women's Liberation Movement is in bed.

I see where we are starting to pay some attention to our neigbors to the south. We could never understand why Mexico wasn't just crazy about us; for we have always had their good will, and oil and minerals, at heart.

The polite thing to do has always been to address people as they wish to be addressed, to treat them in a way they think dignified. But it is equally important to accept and tolerate different standards of courtesy, not expecting everyone else to ad

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

Love may laugh at locksmiths, but he has a profound respect for money bags.

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

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.

You don't have to explain something you never said.

Every why hath a wherefore.

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.

He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry attacks democracy itself.

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business. For the experience of age, in things that fall within the compass of it, directeth them; but in new things, a

"No job too big; no fee too big!"

"You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive."

THE MX IS GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY. One important reason we have a Defense Department is that when we give it money, it spends it, which creates jobs, whereas if we left the money in the hands of civilians, we don't know what they'd do with it. Probabl

There is nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.

Mum's the word.

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...

Luck, that's when preparation and opportunity meet.

You can't have your cake and let your neighbor eat it too.

It is ridiculous to call this an industry. This is not. This is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I'll kill 'em, and I'm going to kill 'em before they kill me. You're talking about the American way of survival of the fittest.

Grub first, then ethics.

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

How is the world ruled, and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists, and they believe what they read.

... [concerning quotation marks] even if we *___did* quote anybody in this business, it probably would be gibberish.

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

The price of success in philosophy is triviality.

Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than being flat broke and having a stomach ache.

There's no such thing as an original sin.

The use of money is all the advantage there is to having money.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

Five bicycles make a volkswagen, seven make a truck.

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

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

I knew her before she was a virgin.

Grig (the navigator): ... so you see, it's just the two of us against the entire space armada. Alex (the gunner): What?!? Grig: I've always wanted to fight a desperate battle against overwhelming odds. Alex: It'll be a slaughter! Grig: That'

Art is Nature speeded up and God slowed down.

Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.

"Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school.

When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.

All Gods were immortal.

It's easier to take it apart than to put it back together.

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

Feminists say 60 percent of the country's wealth is in the hands of women. They're letting men hold the other 40 percent because their handbags are full.

Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers and cheating on your income tax.

Progress might have been all right once, but it's gone on too long.

To use violence is to already be defeated.

The very remembrance of my former misfortune proves a new one to me.

It seems appropriate to me that Mapplethorpe's perverse images should be situated so close to Congress, which perpetuates a number of unnatural acts upon the body politic every day, without benefit of artificial lubrication or foreplay.

"It don't matter, Sail, ... Could be worse. The fam'ly might be donatin' the proceeds to the Cath'lic Church, or the Mormons or somethin'. One cult's the same another."

I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue, than why I have one.

The worst is not so long as we can say "This is the worst."

We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge.

Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped.

"I wonder", he said to himself, "what's in a book while it's closed. Oh, I know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people I don't know yet

Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.

Texas is Hell on woman and horses.

"Hi, I'm Preston A. Mantis, president of Consumers Retail Law Outlet. As you can see by my suit and the fact that I have all these books of equal height on the shelves behind me, I am a trained legal attorney. Do you have a car or a job? Do you ever

That's no moon...

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.

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?

Man must shape his tools lest they shape him.

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

The public is an old woman. Let her maunder and mumble.

An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."

Getting kicked out of the American Bar Association is liked getting kicked out of the Book-of-the-Month Club.

All phone calls are obscene.

Don't take a nickel, just hand them your business card.

Sweet April showers do spring May flowers.

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

There's no justice in this world.

Charity begins at home.

In the highest society, as well as in the lowest, woman is merely an instrument of pleasure.

No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.

Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of whatever depths they were once able to plumb.

"My country, right or wrong" is a thing that no patriot would think of saying, except in a desperate case. It is like saying "My mother, drunk or sober."

Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.

... but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witch

It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon. Which raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody not to.

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."

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

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.

All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.

To think contrary to one's era is heroism. But to speak against it is madness.

Hotels are tired of getting ripped off. I checked into a hotel and they had towels from my house.

He jests at scars who never felt a wound.

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out.

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.

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.

If there really was a Jewish conspiracy to run the world, my rabbi would have let me in on it by now. I contribute enough to the shule.

Another day, another dollar.

Think lucky. If you fall in a pond, check your pockets for fish.

Remember that there is an outside world to see and enjoy.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

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.

I have a very strange feeling about this...

He knows not how to know who knows not also how to unknow.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

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.

Visits always give pleasure: if not on arrival, then on the departure.

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

Mr. Salter's side of the conversation was limited to expressions of assent. When Lord Copper was right he said "Definitely, Lord Copper"; when he was wrong, "Up to a point." "Let me see, what's the name of the place I mean? Capital of Japan? Yokoh

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.

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

In regards to Oral Roberts' claim that God told him that he would die unless he received $20 million by March, God's lawyers have stated that their client has not spoken with Roberts for several years. Off the record, God has stated that "If I had w

A hundred years from now it is very likely that [of Twain's works] "The Jumping Frog" alone will be remembered.

Set the cart before the horse.

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

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

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.

A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm)

You can't underestimate the power of fear.

Practice is the best of all instructors.

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.

You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing

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

You cannot see the wood for the trees.

Small is beautiful.

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

Poverty must have its satisfactions, else there would not be so many poor people.

Vice-President Hubert Humphrey's loquacity is legendary, and Barry Goldwater notes that "Hubert has been clocked at 275 words a minute with gusts up to 340." On the campaign trail during 1964, Republican nominee Barry Goldwater stated, "The imme

Eeny, Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak!

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

How should they answer?

Men are superior to women.

... 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.

An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of these eyes we cannot bear to look out of, we blind them as quickly as possible.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.

Lay on, MacDuff, and curs'd be him who first cries, "Hold, enough!".

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

You're always thinking you're gonna be the one that makes 'em act different.

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?"

Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I Will Fight No More Forever.

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

It's a recession when your neighbour loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.

Government spending? I don't know what it's all about. I don't know any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he doesn't know much.

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

"If we relied conclusively on scientific data for every one of our findings, I'm afraid all of our work would be inconclusive."

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

To add insult to injury.

I will make you shorter by the head.

To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs.

Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.

[He] took me into his library and showed me his books, of which he had a complete set.

I've never been hurt by anything I didn't say.

Work is the crab grass in the lawn of life.

True leadership is the art of changing a group from what it is to what it ought to be.

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.

Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Don't overdo it.

A journey of a thousand miles starts under one's feet.

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

"Listen to what I say, not what I mean. I mean ...."

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.

Justice is incidental to law and order.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

The Worst Jury A murder trial at Manitoba in February 1978 was well advanced, when one juror revealed that he was completely deaf and did not have the remotest clue what was happening. The judge, Mr. Justice Solomon, asked him if he had heard any

You know very well that whether you are on page one or page thirty depends on whether [the press] fear you. It is just as simple as that.

Go away, I'm all right.

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

There is no act of treachery or mean-ness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.

I've got Hubert's pecker in my pocket.

In Pierre Trudeau, Canada has finally produced a Prime Minister worthy of assassination.

Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.

Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions.

Non-Determinism is not meant to be reasonable.

Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.

If a jury in a criminal trial stays out for more than twenty-four hours, it is certain to vote acquittal, save in those instances where it votes guilty.

"I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path."

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

The streets were dark with something more than night.

Plastic... Aluminum... These are the inheritors of the Universe! Flesh and Blood have had their day... and that day is past!

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

What, after all, is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean.

Awash with unfocused desire, Everett twisted the lobe of his one remaining ear and felt the presence of somebody else behind him, which caused terror to push through his nervous system like a flash flood roaring down the mid-fork of the Feather River

... we must not judge the society of the future by considering whether or not we should like to live in it; the question is whether those who have grown up in it will be happier than those who have grown up in our society or those of the past.

... before I could come to any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. What did it matter what anyone knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager? One gets sometimes s

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him.

In dwelling, be close to the land. In meditation, delve deep into the heart. In dealing with others, be gentle and kind. In speech, be true. In work, be competent. In action, be careful of your timing.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

"We maintain that the very foundation of our way of life is what we call free enterprise," said Cash McCall, "but when one of our citizens show enough free enterprise to pile up a little of that profit, we do our best to make him feel that he ought t

There is no cure for birth and death other than to enjoy the interval.

You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.

Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.

America, I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

It follows that any commander in chief who undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forth his reasons, insist of the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather than be the instrument of h